Cities of the Red Night

  At the guardhouse, five of the prisoners are dead. It is easy to reconstruct what happened. Sergeant Gonzalez, attempting to keep all the liquor for himself, was attacked by Corporal Hassanavitch and an accomplice. The sergeant killed them both with his knife and then drained about half the spirits, holding the rest at bay. The sergeant soon being overcome, the others took his knife and cut his throat. The victors then drank the remains of the bottle, which killed three of them.

  “Well, get them out of here.” Hans gestures to the corpses.

  The partisans lead the way, planting shovels in the ground. We leave the prisoners digging graves like sullen Calibans and proceed to the barracks, where we are greeted by the smell of cannabis. The soldiers are laughing and talking, more relaxed now that ten wrong men have been removed.

  “Achtung!”

  The way Hans can say it anyone would believe it.

  The men are now brought to the wardroom one at a time. The hawk-faced youth, whose name is Rodriguez, acts as clerk, writing down answers as Hans fires the questions.

  “Name? Age? Place of birth? Length of service? Locations and times of previous service? What training have you received as a soldier?”

  “Training?” The man looks blank.

  “What did you do all day?”

  “Well, we had to drill and clean the barracks, cook and wash dishes, work in the Captain’s gardens.…”

  “What about your guns? You received instruction in their use? There was daily target practice?”

  “We fired them only at fiestas and parades.”

  “Was there instruction in knife and sword fighting? In unarmed combat?”

  “No, nothing like that. We could get a citation for fighting.”

  “Field exercises?”

  “Qué es eso?”

  “That means you go into jungles or mountains to learn the terrain and pretend to fight a war.”

  “We never left the city.”

  “So you have no idea of conditions and terrain ten miles outside Panama City?”

  “No, sir.”

  “During the time of your service here, have you been sick?”

  “Various times, señor.”

  “And what sicknesses have you had?”

  “Well, sir, chills and fever, cramps and loose bowels.…”

  “Pox?”

  “Yes, sir. The whores here are rotten with it.”

  “And what treatment did you receive?”

  “Not much. The doctor gave me some pills for the pox that made me feel worse. There was a sort of tea for the fever that helped a little.…”

  “You were formerly stationed at Cartagena. What was the situation there as regards sickness?”

  “Much worse, sir. A thousand soldiers died of the yellow sickness. That was when I was transferred.”

  “Was the work there the same?”

  “More or less, except we had to guard the mule train.”

  “So you did leave the city at times?”

  “Yes, sir. Sometimes for a week.”

  “And what was the mule train carrying? You don’t need to tell me. Gold. What else interests the Spanish? Well now, all that gold to protect … the garrison must have been larger than here … perhaps a thousand?”

  “Ten thousand, sir,” says the soldier proudly.

  Hans pretends to be impressed and whistles softly.

  “And galleons no doubt to take away the gold? When all those sailors came ashore there must have been some right brawls in Cartagena, verdad?”

  “Verdad, señor.”

  BIG PICTURE CALLING SHIFTY

  We return to staff headquarters, which we have set up in the Governor’s spacious bedroom on the ground floor. This is the coolest room in the house but even so the heat is oppressive and we must keep the windows covered with mosquito netting which cuts off the occasional eddy of air that is the closest approximation to a breeze. There is a huge ornate curtained bed where exhausted partisans who arrive with dispatches can rest, where the staff officers can catch an hour’s sleep or satisfy the sudden sex hungers that occur during long hours of intense mental concentration without sleep.

  We often work naked in the Governor’s bedroom, seeing the maps with our whole bodies, performing ritual copulations in front of the maps, animating the maps with our sperm. The key map is Big Picture, showing the present area of occupation from Cartagena on the Atlantic seaboard to the Pearl Islands in the Pacific and northwards to a point a hundred miles north of Panama City. Green pins on the map show cities occupied by the partisans. Black pins designate areas occupied by the Spanish.

  The key to Big Picture are ledger books.… We are now transcribing into the ledger books information obtained from the prisoners.

  Cartagena. Location on map. Black pin. Estimated strength of garrison: ten thousand soldiers. Strongly fortified. Has resisted a number of pirate attacks. Gold terminal. Heavily armed convoys pick up gold here. Hygienic conditions worse than Panama. Recent epidemic of yellow fever.

  These ledgers indicate not only the strength of garrisons and the movement of ships, but also the whole way of life of the enemy, what the soldiers do, what the officers do, what food they eat, what illnesses they suffer from, how they think, and what they can be expected to do. Rather like studying past performance to pick the winner of a horse race.

  But the Spanish, since they consist entirely of past performance, are much more predictable than horses. Massively encased in their colonial architecture, their forts and galleons, their uniforms, gold, portraits and religious processions, they move like ponderous armored knights to ends that we can predetermine.

  In addition to Big Picture, there are also much more detailed maps of smaller areas showing locations of arms caches, farmhouses belonging to partisans, streams, wells, and sketches of animals native to the region. As messages come in, the green pins are spreading north and east and south along the Pacific coast. The whole southern isthmus of Panama is now in our hands.

  We study the maps, concentrating on Big Picture. What exactly will the Spanish do? No doubt respond after their kind—heavy, massive, and slow as their galleons. They will dispatch galleons from Cartagena to land troops on the east coast, who will then move west towards Panama City. They will dispatch galleons from Lima to the Bay of Panama to land troops above and below Panama City, in what they fondly think is a crushing pincer movement.

  On the eastern seaboard, we have every chance of a decisive sea victory. Here we have The Siren and The Great White, both now equipped with maneuverable cannons and exploding projectiles. No doubt all the British and French pirates and privateers in the West Indian area will gather like sharks at the smell of Cartagena gold. Our Destroyers will be operating along the coasts and land partisans will make the landing of the troops extremely costly. On the Pacific side, our sea forces are negligible, consisting of only a few Destroyers in the Pearl Islands vicinity. We have, therefore, decided to evacuate Panama City at the approach of the Spanish galleons and let them land as many troops as they wish. In fact, the more they land, the better we like it. The Spanish, confident of victory, will then move north and south relying on heavy reinforcements from the east.

  * * *

  Back in the barracks, the fifteen who are to receive partisan training are lined up. I study each face in turn: Rodriguez, the hawk-faced boy with intense gray eyes, very intelligent, highly literate staff-officer material … Juanito, a little Filipino, always smiling, eager to please … the mulatto reader José, a solid reliable face, steady nerves in combat … Kiki, the half-reader with a Mongoloid face and straight black hair, nicknamed El Chino … Paco with his impudent ingratiating smile … Nemo, a slender yellow-skinned buck-toothed youth with a dancer’s grace … Nimun, a curiously archaic youth part Negro with red hair, brown freckles, and a blank expression—he looks like one of the first mutant redheads from prehistoric time … Pedro, a handsome broad-faced boy with high cheekbones and a smooth reddish face. The others are less distinguishe
d, country faces from farm families who have enlisted to escape grinding poverty.

  “You have been selected for partisan training. Your instruction begins tomorrow. During ten days of training, you will be paid five times your present pay. As soon as you join partisans in the field, the rate will be ten times present pay and an equal share of any booty taken. You will be wearing cadet uniforms from now on. You can come and go as you like after training hours.”

  Hans walks up and down measuring the boys with his eyes and writing measurements down on a clipboard. He hands the list to partisans, who return with a stack of uniforms and boots which they dump on a table.

  We direct the boys to strip and bathe.

  The boys are drawing water from the cistern and pouring it over each other with the usual horseplay and merriment. Paco sidles in behind Nemo and pretends to fuck him, rolling his eyes and showing his teeth and snorting like a horse. “Cabrón!” Nemo screams, dodging away as he empties a bucket of water over Paco’s head.

  I am the eternal spectator, separated by unbridgeable gaps of knowledge, feeling the sperm gathering in tight nuts, the quivering rectums, smelling the iron reek of sex, sweat, and rectal mucus, watching the writhing brown bodies in the setting sun, torn with an ache of disembodied lust and the searing pain of disintegration.

  Silver spots boil in front of my eyes. I am standing in the empty ruined courtyard hundreds of years from now, a sad ghostly visitant in a dead city, smell of nothing and nobody there.

  The boys are flickering shadows of memory, evoking bodies that have long since turned to dust. I am calling, calling without a throat, without a tongue, calling across the centuries: “Paco … Joselito … Enrique.”

  SCREEN PLAY / PART ONE

  It is on the second floor. A brass plaque: “Blum & Krup.” A metal door. A bell. I ring. A cold-eyed young Jew opens the door a crack.

  “Yes? You are client or salesman?”

  “Neither.” I hand him my card. He closes the door and goes away. He comes back.

  “Mr. Blum and Mr. Krup will see you now.”

  He ushers me into an office decorated in the worst German taste with pictures of youths and maidens swimming with swans in northern lakes, the carpets up to my ankles. There, behind a huge desk, are Blum and Krup. A vaudeville team. Blum is Austrian and Jewish, Krup is Prussian and German.

  Krup bows stiffly without getting up. “Krup von Nordenholz.”

  Blum bustles out from behind the desk. “Sit down, Mr. Snide. I am the master here. Have a cigar.”

  “No thanks.”

  “Well, we will have some fun at least. We will have an orgy.” He goes back to his chair on the other side of the desk and sits there watching me through cigar smoke.

  “And why have you not come here sooner, Herr Snide?” asks Krup in a cold dry voice.

  “Oh well, there’s a lot of legwork in this business…” I say vaguely.

  “Ja und Assenwerke.” (Yes and asswork.)

  “We want that you stop with the monkey business and do some real business, Mr. Snide.”

  “We are not a charitable institution.”

  “We do not finance ass fuckings.”

  “Now just a minute, Blum and Krup. I wasn’t aware that you were my clients.”

  Krup emits a short cold bray of laughter.

  Blum takes the cigar out of his mouth and points the butt across the table at my chest. “And who did you think was your million-dollar client?”

  “A green bitch synthesized from cabbage?”

  “Well, if you are my client, what am I expected to do exactly?”

  Krup whinnies like a cynical horse.

  “You are to recover certain rare books now in the possession of a certain Countess,” Blum says.

  “I am not even sure I would know these books if I saw them.”

  “You have seen samples.”

  “I am not sure the samples correspond in any way to the alleged books I am retained to recover.”

  “You think you have been deceived?”

  “Not ‘think.’ Know.”

  The room is so quiet you can hear the long gray cone of Blum’s cigar fall into an ashtray. Finally he speaks. “And suppose we could tell you exactly where the books are?”

  “So they are in someone’s private bank vault surrounded by guards and computerized alarm systems? I am supposed to sneak in there and carry out a carton of books slung over my shoulder in a rare tapestry, stamps and first editions in all my pockets, industrial diamonds up my ass in a finger stall, a sapphire big as a hen’s egg in my mouth? Is that what I am expected to do?”

  Blum laughs loud and long while Krup looks sourly at his nails. “No, Mr. Snide. This is not what you are expected to do. There is a group of well-armed partisans operating in an adjacent area, who will occupy the Countess’s stronghold. You will have only to go in after them and secure the books. There will be an outcry against the partisans who have so savagely butchered a rich foreign sow.… Then stories will filter out about the Countess and her laboratories, and there’ll be something in it for everybody. The CIA, the partisans, the Russians, the Chinese … we will have some fun at least. Might start a little Vietnam down here.”

  “Well,” I say. “You have to take a broad general view of things.”

  “We prefer a very specific view, Mr. Snide,” says Krup looking at a heavy gold pocket watch. “Be here at this time Thursday and we will talk further. Meanwhile, I would strongly advise you to avoid other commitments.”

  “And bring your assistants and the books what you got,” adds Blum.

  * * *

  When Jim and I go to see Blum and Krup on Thursday, we take along the books the Iguanas have given me. Krup looks the books over, snorting from time to time, and as he finishes leafing through each one, he slides it down the table to Blum.

  “Mr. Snide, where are the books you are now making?” asks Krup.

  “Books? Me? I’m just a private eye, not a writer.”

  “You come to make with us the crookery,” snaps Blum, “we break you in your neck. Hans! Willi! Rudi! Heinrich! Herein!”

  Four characters come in with silencered P-38s, like in an old Gestapo movie.

  “And now, your assistant will get the books while you and your Lustknabe remain here. Hans and Heinrich will go with him to make sure he does not so lose himself.”

  Hans and Heinrich step behind Jim. “Keep six feet in front of us at all times.” They file out.

  In half an hour Jim is back with the books. B & K spread them out on the table and both of them stand up and look at them like generals studying a battle plan.

  Finally Krup nods. “Ach ja. With these I think it is enough.”

  Blum turns to me, almost jovial now, rubbing his hands. “Well, you and your assistant and the boy, you are ready to leave, hein?”

  “Leave? Where to?”

  “That you will see.”

  Hans, Rudi, Willi, and Heinrich march us up some stairs onto a roof and into a waiting helicopter. The pilot has a blank cold thuggish face and he is wearing a 45 in a shoulder holster. He looks American. The guards strap us into our seats and blindfold us and we take off. The flight lasts about an hour.

  Then we are herded out and into another plane, a prop job. Dakota, probably. About three hours this time, and we set down on water. They take off our blindfolds and we now have a different pilot. He looks English and has a beard.

  The pilot turns around and smiles. “Well, chaps, here we are.”

  They untie us and we get out on a jetty. It is on a small lake, just big enough to set the plane down. Around the lake I see Quonset huts and in an open space something that looks like an oil rig. A barbed-wire fence surrounds the area with gun towers. There are enough armed guards around for a small army.

  In front of a Quonset hut several men are talking. One comes forward to greet us: it is that CIA punk Pierson.

  “Well, Snide,” he says. “Welcome aboard.”

  “Well, Pierson,??
? I say. “If you can’t lick them join them.”

  “That’s right. How about some chow?”

  “That would be just fine.”

  He leads the way into a Quonset that serves as a dining room. There are long tables and tin plates and a number of men eating. Some of them look like construction workers, others like technicians.

  My attention is drawn to a table of about thirty youths. They are the best-looking boys I have ever seen at one time, and all of them are ideal specimens of white Anglo-Saxon youth.

  “Our genetic pool,” Pierson explains.

  A fat mess sergeant slops some fish and rice and stewed apricots on our plates and fills tin cups with cold tea.

  “Army-style here,” says Pierson.

  After we finish eating, he lights a cigarette and grins at me through the smoke.

  “Well, I guess you are wondering what this is all about.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Come along to my digs and I’ll explain. Some of it, at least.”

  I know quite a bit already. Much more than I want him to think I know. And I know that the less he tells me the better chance I have of getting out of here alive. I’ve already seen that the oil rig is a rocket-launching pad. Things are falling into place.

  He leads the way to a small prefab. He turns to Jim and Kiki: “Why don’t you two look around? Do some fishing. You can get tackle at the PX. The lake is stocked with largemouth bass … You’ll do well here.…”

  I nod to Jim and he walks away with Kiki. Pierson unlocks the door and we go in. A cot, a card table, some chairs, a few books. He motions me to a chair, sits down and looks at me. “You saw the launching pad?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what do you think it will be used for?”

  “To launch something, obviously.”

  “Obviously. A space capsule that will also be a communications satellite.”

  I am beginning to understand what they are planning to communicate.

  “Now, just suppose an atom bomb should fall on New York City. Who would be blamed for that?”