When I’d left, I’d said good-bye for keeps. Because once I’d dug up the loot I meant to go to other countries, not Venezuela, alter the jewels so they could not be recognized, sell them and move on to Spain. From there it would be easy to go and pay a call on Prosecuting Counsel and Co. So you can imagine the terrific uproar when the musketeers saw me turn up at the garage door. Dinner and a party cake to celebrate my return, and Dédée put four flowers on the table. We drank to the re-formed team, and life started off again at full throttle. But still, I was no longer as carefree as I had been.
I felt sure Armando and Deloifre had designs on me that they were keeping back, probably something to do with the coup d’etat, although both knew my position as far as that was concerned. They often asked me to come and have a drink or to eat at Deloifre’s place. Wonderful food, and no witnesses. Deloifre did the cooking, and his faithful chauffeur Victor waited table. We talked about a great many things, but in the end the conversation always came round to the same subject--General Medina Angarita. The most liberal of all Venezuelan presidents; not a single political prisoner during his régime; no one persecuted because of his ideas; a policy of coexistence with all other states, all other regimes, even to the point of setting up diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union; he was good, he was noble, and the people so loved him for his simplicity that one day, during a celebration at El Paralso, they carried him and his wife in triumph, like toreros.
Constantly telling me about this wonderful Medina, who walked around Caracas with just one aide-de-camp and went to the cinema like an ordinary citizen, Armando and Deloifre almost persuaded me that only a man with his heart in the right place would do anything to bring Medina back to power. They painted a very dark picture of the present government’s injustice and its vengeful attitude towards a whole section of the population; and to make me like their marvelous president even more, Deloifre told me Medina lived it up with the very best of them. On top of that, he was a personal friend, although he knew Deloifre had escaped from jail.
At last, almost won over--mistakenly, as I learned afterward-- I began to think of taking part in the coup d’etat. My hesitation vanished entirely (I have to say this because I want to be honest) when I was promised the money and all the facilities I needed to set my plan of revenge in motion.
So this is how it was that one night Deloffre and I were sitting there at his place, me dressed as a captain and Deloffre as a colonel, ready to go into action.
It began badly. To identify one another, the civilian conspirators were supposed to wear a green armband, and the password was Aragua. We were supposed to be at action stations at two in the morning. But about eleven that night four guys turned up in the one horse-drawn cab left in Caracas; they were totally plastered, and they were singing at the top of their voices, to the accompaniment of a guitar. They stopped just in front of the house, and to my horror I heard them singing songs full of allusions to tonight’s coup d’etat--allusions as obvious as an elephant. One of them bawled out to Deloifre, “Pierre! Tonight the nightmare comes to an end at last! Courage and dignity, arnigo! Our Papa Medina must return!”
For goddamned utter foolishness you could not have asked better. The time between some joker’s telling the pigs and the cops’ coming to call on us would be very short. I was hopping mad, and I had every reason to be: we had three bombs there in the car, two in the trunk and one on the back seat, covered with a rug.
“Well, they’re a terrific bunch, your friends. If they’re all like this, we needn’t bother: we might just as well go straight to prison.”
Deloifre howled with laughter, as calm as if he were going to a ball; he was delighted with himself in his colonel’s uniform, and he kept admiring his reflection in the mirror. “Don’t you worry, Papillon. Anyhow, we aren’t going to hurt anyone. As you know, these three gas bottles have got nothing but powder in them. Just to make a noise, that’s all.”
“And what’s going to be the point of this little noise of yours?”
“It’s merely to give the signal to the conspirators scattered about the town. That’s all. There’s nothing bloody or savage about it, you see--we don’t want to hurt anybody. We just insist on their going away, that’s all.”
Okay. Anyhow, whether I liked it or not I was up to the neck in this. It was not my job to quiver with alarm or be sorry: all I had to do was wait for the given time.
I refused Deloffre’s port--it was the only thing he drank: two bottles a day at least. He tossed back a few glasses.
The three musketeers arrived in a command car transformed into a crane. It was going to be used to carry off two safes, one belonging to the airline company and the other to the Model Prison; one of the governors--or maybe the man in command of the garrison--was in the plot. I was to have 50 percent of what was inside and I had insisted on being there when the prison safe was grabbed: they had agreed. It would be a sweet revenge on all the prisons in the world. This was a job very near to my heart.
A dispatch rider brought the final orders: arrest no enemies; let them escape. Carlotta, the civilian airport right in the middle of the city, had already been cleared so that the chief members of the present government and their officials could get away in light planes without a hitch.
It was then that I learned where the first bomb was to be let off. Well, well, well: this Deloffre certainly went about things in style. It was to go off right in front of the presidential palace, Miraflores. The others were to explode one in the east and the other in the west of Caracas, to make it look like things were breaking out everywhere. I smiled to myself at the idea of the alarm and despondency we were going to cause in the palace.
This big wooden gate was not the official entrance to the palace. It was the back of the building; the military trucks used it, and big shots and the president would sometimes come and go this way when they wanted to avoid being noticed.
Our watches were all set to the same time. We were to be at the gate at three minutes to two. Someone inside was going to open it a crack for just two seconds, long enough for the driver to make the noise of a toad with a little child’s toy that imitated it very well. That was how they would know we were there. What was the point? Nobody told me. Were President Gallegos’s guards in the plot and would they take him prisoner? Or would they be put out of action right away by other conspirators already inside? I knew nothing about that.
One thing was certain: at two o’clock precisely I had to light the fuse leading to the detonator on the gas bottle I had between my knees and then toss it out of the door, giving it a good shove so it would roll toward the palace gate. The fuse lasted exactly one minute thirty seconds. So I was to light it with my cigar, and the moment it started to fizz, shift my right leg and open the door, counting thirty seconds as I did so. At the thirtieth, start it rolling. We had worked out that the wind would make it burn faster as it rolled along, and that there would be only forty seconds before the explosion.
Although the bottle had no bits of iron in it, its own splinters would be extremely dangerous, so we would have to shoot straight off in the car to take shelter. That would be VIctor the chauffeur’s job.
I’d persuaded Deloffre that if there were any soldiers or cops nearby, he, in his colonel’s uniform, would order them to run to the corner of the street. He promised me he’d do just that.
We reached this famous gate at three minutes to two without any difficulty. We drew up along the opposite pavement. No sentry, no cop. Fine. Two minutes to two... - one minute to two... two o’clock.
The gate did not open.
I was all tensed up. I said to Deloifre, “Pierre, it’s two o’clock.”
“I know. I’ve got a watch, too.”
“This stinks.”
“I don’t understand what’s going on. Let’s wait another five minutes.”
“Okay.”
Two minutes past two... the gate shot open; soldiers came running out and took up their positions, weapons at the ready
. It was as clear as gin: we had been betrayed.
“Get going, Pierre. We’ve been betrayed!”
It took more than that to knock Pierre off his perch; he seemed not to have grasped the situation at all. “Don’t talk bullshit. They’re on our side.”
I brought out a forty-five and rammed it against the back of Victor’s neck. “Get going, or I kill you!”
I was certain of feeling the car leap forward as Victor stamped on the accelerator with all his force, but all I heard was this unbelievable remark: “Hombre, it’s not you who gives orders here: it’s the boss. What does the boss say?”
Hell: I’d seen some guys with guts, but never one like this halfcaste Indian. Never!
There was nothing I could do because there were soldiers three yards away. They’d seen the colonel’s stars on Deloifre’s epaulet up against the window, so they came no closer.
“Pierre, if you don’t tell Victor to get going, it’s not him I’ll put the chill on but you.”
“Little old Papi, I keep telling you they’re on our side. Let’s Wait a little longer,” said Pierre, turning his head toward me. As he did so I saw his nostrils were shining with white powder stuck to them. I got it: the guy was stuffed full with cocaine. An appalling fear came over me, and I was putting my gun to his neck when he said with the utmost calm, “It’s six minutes past two, Papi. We’ll wait two more. We’ve certainly been betrayed.”
Those hundred and twenty seconds lasted forever. I had my eye on the soldiers; the nearest were watching us, but for the moment they were making no move. At last Deloifre said, “Vamos, Victor: let’s go. Gently, naturally, not too fast.”
And by a positive miracle we came out of that mantrap alive. Phew! Some years later there was a film called The Longest Day. Well, you could have made one called The Longest Eight Minutes out of that party of ours.
Deloifre told the driver to make for the bridge that runs from El Paralso to the Avenida San Martin. He wanted to let his bomb off under it. On the way we met two trucks filled with conspirators who didn’t know what to do now, having heard no explosion at two o’clock. We told them we had been betrayed; but saying this made Deloifre change his mind and he ordered the chauffeur to drive back to his place, fast. A mistake the size of a house, because, since we had been betrayed, the pigs might very well be there already. Still, we went: and as I was helping Victor put my bomb into the trunk I noticed that it had three letters painted on it: P.R.D. I couldn’t help roaring with laughter when PierreRené Deloifre told me the reason for them; we were taking off our uniforms at the time. “Papi, never forget that whenever the business is dangerous you must always do things in style. Those initials were my calling card for the enemies of my friend.”
Victor went and left the car in a parking place, forgetting of course, to leave the keys as well. The three bombs were not found until three months later.
No question of hanging around at Deloifre’s. He went his way, I went mine. No contact with Armando. I went straight to the garage, where I helped carry away the lathe and the five or six bottles of gas that were lying about. At six o’clock the telephone rang and a mysterious voice said, “Frenchmen, get out, all of you. Each in a different direction. Only B.L. must stay in the garage. You get it?”
“Who’s that?”
He hung up.
Dressed as a woman and driven in a jeep by a former officer of the French Resistance, I made my way out of Caracas with no trouble at all and reached Rio Chico, about a hundred and twentyfive miles away on the coast. I was going to stay there for a couple of months with this ex-captain and his wife and a couple of friends from Bordeaux.
B.L. was arrested. No torture: only a stiff, thoroughgoing but correct interrogation. When I heard that, I decided the Gallegos and Betancourt régime was not as wicked as they said; at least not in this case. Deloifre took refuge that same night in the Nicaraguan embassy.
As for me, I was still full of confidence in life, and a week later the ex-captain and I were driving the RIo Chico Public Works Department’s truck. Through a friend we’d got ourselves taken on by the municipality. We made twenty-one bolIvars a day between us, and on that we lived, all five of us.
This road-construction life lasted two months, long enough for the storm raised by our plot to die down in Caracas and for the police to turn their minds to the reports about a new one that was cooking. Very wisely they concentrated on the present and left the past to itself. I asked nothing better, because I had made up my mind not to let myself be dragged into another job of that kind. For the moment, by far the best thing to do was to live here quietly with my friends, drawing no attention to myself.
In the late afternoon I often went fishing, to add to our daily rations. That evening I had hauled out a huge robalo, a kind of big sea bream, and I was sitting on the beach, scaling it in no particular hurry and admiring the wonderful sunset. A red sky means hope, Papi! And in spite of all the flops I had had since I was let out, I began to laugh. Yes, hope must make me live and win: and it was going to do just that. But exactly when was success going to come along? Let’s have a look at things, Papi: let’s add up the results of two years of freedom.
I wasn’t broke, but I didn’t have much: three thousand bolivars at the outside, the sum total of two years on the loose.
What had happened during this time?
One: the heap of gold at El Callao. No point in brooding over that: it was something you gave up voluntarily so the ex-cons there could go living in peace. You regret it? No. Okay, then forget the ton of gold.
Two: craps at the diamond mines. You nearly got yourself killed twenty times for ten thousand dollars you never cashed in on. Jojo died in your place: you came out alive. Without a cent, true enough; but what a terrific adventure! You’ll never forget all those nights, keyed up to the breaking point, the gamblers’ faces under the carbide lamp, the unmoved Jojo. Nothing to regret there either.
Three: the tunnel under the bank. Not the same thing at all; there really was no luck about that job. Still, for three months you lived at full blast twenty-four hours a day. Even if you got no more out of it than that, you don’t have to be sorry for yourself. Do you realize that for three months on end, even in your dreams, you felt you were a millionaire with never a doubt about getting your hands on the dough? Doesn’t that mean anything? Of course, just a trifle more luck might have given you a fortune; but on the other hand you might have been much more unlucky. Suppose the tunnel had caved in while you were at the far end? You’d have died like a rat or they would have caught you like a fox in its earth.
Four: what about the pawnshop and its refrigerators? No complaints, except for the Public Works Department of that damnable country.
Five: the plot. Frankly, you were never really wholehearted about that business. These political jobs and those bombs that might kill anybody--it’s not your line. What it really comes to is that you were taken in first by the sales pitch of two very nice guys and then by the promise of being able to carry out your plan. But your heart wasn’t in it, because you never felt it was quite legit to attack the government that had let you out.
Still, on the credit side you had four months of fun with the musketeers, their wives and the kid; and you aren’t likely to forget those days full of the joy of life.
Conclusion: You were unjustly imprisoned for fourteen years and almost all your youth was stolen from you. But you’ve been free the last two years, and in those two years you’ve had countless experiences and terrific adventures. You’ve had wonderful love; you’ve known men of every kind who’ve given you their friendship--men you’ve risked your life with; and after all this, do you still keep moaning? You’re broke, or nearly broke? What does that matter? Poverty’s not a difficult disease to cure. So glory be to God, Papil You’re fit, which is the really important thing.
Let’s wipe it all out and begin again, gentlemen. The chips are down! Make your last bets--this is it! Banco lost, banco again: banco again and again
and again. Banco right along the line. But let your whole being thrill and quiver, singing a song of hope that one day you’ll hear, “Nine on the nose! Rake it in, Monsieur Papillon! You’ve won!”
The sun was almost touching the horizon. Red in the evening, that meant hope. The breeze had freshened, and with a calmer mind I stood up, happy to be free and alive; my feet sank in the wet sand as I went back toward the house, where they were waiting for what I had caught for the evening meal. As I walked back, I gave myself over to all the colors, the countless touches of light and shade playing on the crests of the little waves stretching out forever. They stirred me so deeply, what with my remembering past dangers overcome, that I couldn’t help thinking of their creator, of God. “Good night, Big Guy, good night! In spite of all these flops, I still thank You for having given me such a beautiful day full of sun and freedom and, to finish it off, this marvelous sunset!”
9
Maracaibo: Among the Indians
One day, when I was making a quick trip to Caracas, a friend introduced me to a former Paris model who was looking for someone to help her in a new hotel she had just opened at Maracaibo. I very willingly accepted the job of being her man Friday. She was called Laurence; I think she had come to Caracas to show a collection, and then decided to settle in Venezuela. Six hundred miles lay between Caracas and Maracaibo, and that suited me fine; it was always possible the police might reopen their inquiries into our coup d’etat.
A friend gave me a lift, and after fourteen hours’ driving I had my first sight of Lake Maracaibo--they call it a lake, although in fact it is a huge lagoon nearly a hundred miles long and sixty wide at the broadest point, and it is joined to the sea by a channel about eight miles across. Maracaibo lies to the north, on the west bank of the channel, which is now linked to the east bank by a bridge. In those days, though, if you came from Caracas, you had to cross on a ferry.