I told him, ‘No I won’t take anything. I want to tell you that I’ve quarrelled finally with the Captain.’
‘The Captain?’
‘The man you call Smith.’
Mr Quigly didn’t answer for a while. He seemed to be plunged in reflection, and when he answered it was in a tone of reproach. ‘Was that really necessary?’
‘He’s giving me my ticket home. He wants me to go on the first possible plane.’
‘And you?’
‘I don’t want to go. I told him you had offered me a job.’
‘And what did he say to that?’
‘He was furious. I was afraid of him. I went away.’
Mr Quigly again seemed sunk in thought. He was not an impulsive man I knew by this time. Perhaps he was calculating in figures as he had at the airport, not ten but twelve. At last he spoke again. ‘I must say I find myself a little at sea. Why was he so angry? You seemed to have talked a little rashly about that job. Nothing is quite settled yet. After all he’s your father. He has a right …’
‘But he isn’t my father. He won me at backgammon – or at chess. The Devil says it was chess.’
‘Who on earth is the Devil?’
‘My real father.’
‘Oh dear, oh dear,’ Mr Quigly said. ‘I think before we settle about a job you’ll have to make things a little clearer to me. I haven’t the final word you know. There are others I have to persuade.’
So I told him as briefly as I could the story of myself and Liza and our life with the Captain and his frequent disappearances and changes of name. I told him too of Liza’s death and how I had lied to the Captain.
He surprised me by his comment when I had finished. ‘Why, it’s quite a love story.’
‘I don’t know about the love,’ I said.
‘Well, at least they seemed to have – how shall I put it – needed each other. I suppose that could be called love.’ Mr Quigly spoke like one who had as little experience in that domain as I had and depended on hearsay. ‘What do you suppose he did to keep you both? A single man who takes on a family. It’s no light thing.’
‘We never knew exactly what he did, but the police seemed always interested in him.’
‘I too have often wondered,’ Mr Quigly said. ‘He seems to earn a lot of money here with that plane of his. Charter flights I suppose. But carrying what? Well, I think I know the answer to that. And how did he get a plane in the first place?’
‘He told me it all began in Colombia.’
‘Yes, I did get to know something of that from a colleague of mine in Caracas. Probably drugs. Nothing very serious I should imagine. Not hard drugs. Just marijuana. Baby stuff. He dropped the traffic pretty soon I imagine and flew here. Perhaps it was too dangerous or perhaps his conscience … Has he a conscience? Anyway I doubt if he ever paid for his plane because I happen to know – from my colleague – that one country he’ll never go back to around here is Colombia. I think he may be wanted there by his old comrades.’
‘You seem to know a lot. I thought you were only a financial correspondent.’
Mr Quigly gave his abrupt little giggle, a giggle which was as narrow as himself. There was no humour in it, or, if there was, it was a humour as tightly confining as his trousers.
‘Finance,’ he said, ‘comes into everything. Politics, war, marriage, crime, adultery. Everything that exists in the world has something to do with money. Even religion. The priest has to buy his bread and wine and the criminal has to buy his gun – or his plane.’
‘But you think the drug business is over?’
‘I am sure of it. He wouldn’t be protected by Colonel Martínez in the drug business, and he is protected.’
‘Who is this Colonel Martínez?’
‘Well, it’s difficult to say exactly. An important officer in the National Guard.’
‘Are you protected?’
‘They don’t exactly protect me so far as I can tell, but of course they are interested in me. You see, I work for an American paper … they’re apt to be suspicious of anything American.’
‘What use is an old plane like the Captain’s?’
‘Oh, he can’t carry very heavy stuff of course, but it’s not the heavy stuff which the guerrillas need.’
‘Guerrillas? In Panama?’
‘No, no, not in Panama, but you know the phrase “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.” The people here hate the Zone. In Nicaragua they are fighting Somoza and in Salvador they are fighting the death squads – and both Somoza and the death squads are helped by the United States.’
‘And where are you in all this?’
‘I’ve told you. I’m only a financial correspondent. My paper is not very important, but I’m pretty sure my information is read even in the Wall Street Journal. Of course I am English. I’m neutral, but news is news. Even news about the small stuff. You see, the small stuff has to be bought somewhere. Of course the Yankees say it comes from Russia or Cuba. Anyone who fights a dictator controlled by them is a Communist. It’s a useful way of explaining things to the great public and perhaps they are right. It wouldn’t do to say that their friend Israel might be ready to sell a few tanks to their friends the dictators. Finance you see, finance in everything. I am a financial correspondent and I need information.’
I was surprised by Mr Quigly. Behind all his evasions and abstractions he was for once remarkably frank.
‘And you are ready to give me a job?’ I challenged him.
‘A small retainer I should say while I consult my editor. What about another whisky?’
I agreed, for whisky had certainly loosened Mr Quigly’s tongue. He held this one in his hand without even sipping it. He gazed deep into the glass like a medium who is looking for an image in a crystal ball. At last – perhaps he had seen the image which he was seeking – he said, ‘I regard your father, I mean Mr Smith, or what is it you call him, the Captain, as a friend whom I had hoped to know much better. In helping you I thought that I might be indirectly helping him. We can help each other in little ways. I am really rather distressed to hear that you have quarrelled with him.’ He added with unexpected crudity, ‘After all he’s in it for the money as much as I am, and we might easily have come to work together. It’s all a financial affair when you come down to it. My friends could pay him a lot better than the guerrillas. Have you seen his plane?’
‘He’s taken me for a ride.’
‘I’ve always wondered where he kept it. Perhaps you could give me a clue.’
I was still lost – I don’t think it was only the whisky which bemused me. I said, ‘The clue I want is where to spend the night. I suppose there are cheap hotels even in Panama.’
‘I would not advise a cheap hotel in Panama. But you don’t need to worry. To tell you the truth it’s Mr Smith I have to worry about. He can be rash. I’d like to see your father – sorry, Mr Smith – and try to make up for this unnecessary quarrel. Perhaps he’s flown off in a rage. If he’s not at the hotel. Where do you say he kept his plane?’
I had said nothing, but now I told him as best I could. It was the map of the unmade town which caught his attention. ‘Oh there, how very odd. What possible shelter?’
‘Oh, there’s a sort of hut.’
The drinks had loosened my tongue too and freed my curiosity. ‘What I don’t understand is how you two could possibly work together. You haven’t told me anything clearly, but I can tell you are on opposite sides.’
‘There are no opposite sides where money is concerned. He’s not working for a cause. He’s working for that adopted mother of yours and now she’s dead. He doesn’t need money for her any longer. He doesn’t need money for you. I can find you all you need. He needs a little for himself of course, and I can help him there, if only he would listen to me.’
‘How?’
‘I’ll pay him well for any information he can give me.’
I noticed Mr Quigly always used the word information, never intelligence. Perhaps he thou
ght it a more innocuous word.
‘Do you agree,’ Mr Quigly asked, ‘that I go and see him first thing in the morning? He will have had time to think things over. The changed situation. Your mother’s – what’s her name? – Liza’s death.’
‘You can do what you like. It won’t do you any good. He’ll never forgive me for my lies.’
‘Perhaps I can show them to him from a new angle.’
‘He doesn’t trust you.’
‘Perhaps not me. But in finance one trusts one’s bank. I could be his bank.’
I was tired of the two words, bank and finance. I wanted to sleep.
Mr Quigly in the end was very obliging. He found me a room of a sort not very far off and paid for the night’s rent in advance. Before he left he asked me to call him Fred. ‘My name is Cyril,’ he said, ‘but all my real friends call me Fred.’ It was as if he was putting his signature – true or false – to an agreement, and I couldn’t help feeling that Cyril suited him far better than the colloquial Fred.
(10)
I was woken around ten and fetched to the telephone. A voice said, ‘Fred speaking,’ and for a long moment I couldn’t remember who Fred was. ‘Quigly,’ the voice explained with impatience. ‘I’m at the Continental Hotel. Please come at once.’
‘I can’t come at once. I’m not dressed.’
‘Then dress quickly, please.’ He spoke almost as though he were already my employer.
I found him waiting in the lobby and he drew me away out of earshot of the porter.
‘He’s gone,’ he said.
‘Gone where?’
‘It’s what I’d like to know. The porter’s got a letter for him. With an English stamp. That’s interesting. Ask him to give it to you. Say you are off to see him. And ask him to give you back the key of his room. They won’t let me have it, but they know you shared it and it’s still reserved.’
‘Why should I want the key back – or you?’
‘There may be indications.’
‘Of what?’
‘Of what he’s up to.’
‘I thought you knew – something to do with arms.’
‘As a newspaper man,’ he was still clinging to that unlikely cover, ‘I want details.’
‘If they are financial, I suppose,’ I said to mock him, ‘they will interest the Wall Street Journal.’
But he was quite unconscious of my teasing. ‘Yes, his finances are of great interest, and who finances him. I think this letter may give us a clue.’
I gave way to him and went to fetch the letter and the key. There was no difficulty. The porter probably thought I had spent the night there. Up in the room we had shared Mr Quigly moved quickly around. ‘He can’t be gone far,’ he said. ‘He’s coming back tonight.’ And he held up a pair of pyjamas lying on the sofa unfolded.
I said, ‘I used the sofa. Those are my pyjamas.’
‘Ah,’ he wasn’t disappointed, for he had turned over a pillow on the bed, ‘then these are his. So it comes to the same thing. He expects to return.’
‘Are you glad of that?’
‘Yes, for it’s much easier to keep an eye on him here. I expect that he’ll be going by his usual route. Over Costa Rica. Then across the border to drop the arms somewhere in the Estelí region where the Sandinistas are strongest.’
‘I don’t even know what country you are talking about.’
‘Look in the wardrobe, while I go through the waste-paper basket.’
I obeyed him. I was beginning to be interested myself. I had never followed as closely as we were doing now the Captain’s activities, which had kept Liza and myself in a kind of demi-comfort through so many years. The nearest I had ever come to what Mr Quigly liked to call ‘information’ was that line I had read in the Telegraph about a man ‘with a military bearing’ who had asked the way at the jeweller’s shop to ‘Baxter Street’. Baxter Street and Estelí – two unknown places cropping up with so many years between them.
‘Where’s Estelí?’ I asked.
‘I told you. Where Somoza’s National Guard is weakest and the Sandinistas strongest.’
‘What country are you talking about?’
‘You seem an ignorant sort of fellow. Don’t you know that there’s a civil war in Nicaragua? At least lend me a hand and look at the wardrobe.’
‘Nothing there. Only a suit and some shirts.’
‘Anything in the pockets?’
‘Nothing,’ I lied, for there was indeed a letter which I had slipped into one of my own pockets without looking at the address. I was not yet an employee of Mr Quigly I told myself. A room for one night without even a meagre breakfast was not a binding obligation.
‘He’s obviously planning to return,’ Mr Quigly said, ‘but perhaps we could still intercept him before he leaves. They say he only went away half an hour ago. He won’t have got far in that old Renault of his and it won’t hold much of an arsenal. Probably a few grenades. Not that they’re much good against Somoza’s tanks, US supplied. Don’t despise financial information. It’s wonderfully intricate. That English stamp. You say that his woman’s dead, so who’s his correspondent? Never mind now. We’ve got to move quick. If we can catch him with anti-tank grenades in the plane I don’t see how Colonel Martínez could cover him up without a scandal. And a scandal would suit the Yankees well enough – as well as my paper of course. Any paper loves a scandal.’
‘But where do you want to go?’
‘To his plane of course. You know where he keeps it.’
A disturbed hot night in a small hotel with a hard pillow and a window which wouldn’t open had kept my anger against the Captain still alive, so I didn’t hesitate. I would earn my bonus.
Mr Quigly’s Mercedes for the first time impressed me. When he met me at the airport I had been too tired to take notice of it. I sat beside him and directed him a bit uncertainly – over the great bridge, past the military instalments of the Zone, the churches, the golf links, the smart villas, back into Panama, until we reached the map of the non-existent town. ‘Go slow here,’ I told him. ‘There’s a turning to take.’
He obeyed but his thoughts were elsewhere. He said, ‘If we catch him the scandal might kill the Canal Treaty. The Senate would be happy.’
‘What Canal treaty?’
He ignored my ignorance. ‘And Congress too.’ He added, ‘That letter with the English stamp. You might read it to me while we drive.’
‘I don’t think he would like me to give him an envelope I’d opened.’
‘I have a strong feeling we are too late. We may never see him again. All right. Have it your way. Keep the letter closed until we reach – what do you call it? his runway. Or should we say his runaway. If he’s not there I see no reason why you shouldn’t open it. Even if he returns he’ll never know there was a letter.’
‘It wouldn’t interest you. I know the writing on the envelope. It’s from a dead woman.’
‘A dead woman?’
‘Liza.’
‘Ah well, forget it. He knows how long letters take to reach Panama.’
‘Stop here. I’m almost sure it’s the place.’
I looked at the bushes and saw the trampled signs of the Renault’s passing. We followed bumping on its track until I saw the runway and the empty shed.
‘My goodness,’ Mr Quigly exclaimed (I was never to hear him use a stronger expletive). ‘It’s a bit rough, isn’t it? I wouldn’t like to come down here – or take off, with a load of anti-tank missiles too perhaps.’
He sat staring for a while, then he turned on his engine. ‘I must get back and send a telegram.’
‘Financial information?’
‘You wouldn’t be far wrong to call it that,’ he replied with his usual caution.
He drove me back in a glum and broody silence while I wondered if he used some kind of code in his telegrams – perhaps something as simple as the book code which as a boy I had once read about in a novel of espionage. The spy and his correspondents chose a s
entence out of an agreed book, perhaps an edition of the complete works of Shakespeare, which would give a wide choice of lines to play with, and on that sentence and its order of words the code was somehow based. I tried to imagine what kind of book Mr Quigly and his Americans would have chosen. Not Updike. Updike was too short for safety. Perhaps he would have gone back to some long classic like Gone With The Wind.
At the Continental Mr Quigly broke his silence. ‘No point,’ he said, ‘in being uncomfortable. The room you shared is still reserved. You could even use the bed. I’ll telephone you at once when I have news of him.’
I collected the key from the porter who told me, ‘There’s a telephone message for your father,’ and I read it in the lift. ‘Please telephone the office of Colonel Martínez.’ Well, I thought, Colonel Martínez would have to wait a long while for a reply.
The two unread letters in my pocket weighed on my mind, and as soon as I was alone I opened first the one which was addressed legitimately to me. A cheque and a ticket came out first and then the letter. It amazed me by its length, and as I read by its contents. Something after all the years of discretion had made him speak at last, and that something of course was the death of Liza.
Jim, you have been lying to me every day since you arrived and God alone knows why you didn’t continue. I suppose you were waiting till I found you a job and set you up to live on me as you have lived on me all these years. I kept you for Liza’s sake, but Liza is dead. I don’t want to see your face again – it bears too many memories of Liza. Here’s your ticket home to London and a cheque which will keep you for a few weeks if you cash it here before you go, time for you to get a job at home. You’ve no place here. But my last advice to you and my last responsibility to you is to warn you to keep clear of that man Quigly. I’m sorry I ever asked his help to meet you, but he was around and he’s always ready to do small things for me. It’s his way of keeping in touch with me, and he’s paid for that by his employers and God damn them all. They never got a penny’s worth of value out of me.
You’ve no reason at all to trust me. I know that well. I’ve been a liar too, but I’ve never lied to you or, whatever the old Devil may have told you, to Liza – only to the coppers. It’s a fuliginous story, I know that. When I began I didn’t steal to make myself rich. I stole without an object. It was a game, a risky game like roulette. In war one begins to enjoy a little danger. In that German camp I was bored to death by safety and when I got over the frontier I was bored by the peace of the Spanish monastery. Back in England learning to fly was only too easy like getting a car licence. Then peace came almost as soon I got into the air. No danger. No glabrous excitement. So I stole. That was amusement enough until I met the Devil and saw poor Liza in the hospital and the child she wanted so much was killed inside her by order of the Devil. I don’t know that she ever really cared much for me. She was an honest girl and I don’t think she would ever have liked to use the word love untruly. Since then I’ve played the danger game only for her sake so that one day she might be safe when I was gone. When you told me she was dead, I knew that I wasn’t needed by her any more. I never took risks, serious risks, after I met Liza, but now all my responsibility is over. Thank God, if he should exist, for granting me that at least. I’m not unhappy, nothing bad can happen to Liza any longer, she’s free and I’m free at last, and free of you too. I’ve escaped from the prison camp again. There’s one useful thing I can do for my friends now that Liza’s gone, and I can take any risk I like. For you I’ve done enough. I don’t want you to write to me. I won’t read anything you write. You’ve betrayed Liza. Don’t wait for me when you get this letter. Go away and never come back.