If Asado had consulted him, he would have told him to ‘disappear’ General Fuerte, but Asado, acting without orders, had taken the General straight to hospital. Every day that the General remained alive would make it harder to get rid of him, but something had to be done all the same, because he was well known to be inflexibly fair and principled, and if he were ever let out he would undoubtedly become more than an embarrassment. Ramirez knew very well that Fuerte commanded a huge loyalty in his own forces, which would, if push came to shove, obey him rather than the High Command. Ramirez had arranged for General Fuerte to be released in a week and then obliterated in a car crash, but now there was the news that Fuerte had somehow escaped from the Villa Maravillosa, and no one knew where he had gone. He had telegraphed Valledupar, but they had said that no, the General had not returned from leave yet, and yes, they would let him know when he returned.
General Fuerte took only two days to reach the capital from Valledupar, and on the first evening’s encampment had briefed the officers in these words:
‘Gentlemen, we have before us an important mission for which speed and efficiency are of the essence, and where surprise will be the key element. It has come to the attention of the Highest Authorities that certain renegade officers acting without orders have set up a concentration, torture and extermination camp in the old officers’ wing of the Army School of Electrical and Mechanical Engineering. The establishment contains both civilian and military of all services who are being tortured to death in a manner which you will unfortunately see for yourselves. Our orders are simply to arrest the renegade officers and bring out the prisoners. Fortunately we can expect little or no armed resistance, but no one should hesitate to shoot to kill if that occurs.
‘No special tactics will be required; we will simply walk into the place and overwhelm them with numbers. I shall lead the men in, and your job will be to ascertain as rapidly as possible the layout of the place, neutralise all opposition with the minimum of bloodshed, and commence evacuation.
‘Gentlemen, you have been chosen for this mission because you are considered the best, most reliable, and most honourable troops in the country. The importance of this mission should be underlined for you by the fact that it is being led by a General and not by a Comandante or a Lieutenant-Colonel.
‘Gentlemen, I apologise for lack of details in the plan. Unfortunately the plan of the building has not been obtainable, but I want Number One Platoon to be responsible for guarding the renegades under close arrest. Number Two Platoon should concern itself with bringing out those prisoners who are unable to move on their own and laying them as carefully as possible in the empty trucks. Number Three Platoon should gather together those who can still walk, and prepare them for the journey back to Valledupar, by which I mean that they should be washed, clothed and fed, using what can be found on the premises. The prisoners will be terrified and disorientated and you must ensure that they are treated gently, courteously, and calmly. Number Four Platoon will take responsibility for preventing the entry at the gate of anyone who is not driving a Ford Falcon. These latter should be allowed in and then arrested, with force if necessary. Needless to say, the platoon should also ensure that nobody leaves.
‘Gentlemen, you may dismiss to brief your platoons. Tell your men that the honour of the National Army is at stake and that I have every confidence in the Portachuelo Guards.’
The following evening the convoy halted in the wilderness of the Incarama Park and encamped in the gloomy ruins of El Escorial, next to the Temple of Viracocha. The General imparted to the officers revisions and improvements to his plans, and then went out to smoke a puro under the stars. Smoking puros was a habit he had picked up amongst the guerrilleros, and he began to cast his mind back over the months he had spent with them. He remembered with half a smile his fervent arguments with Father Garcia, and thought of something he should have said to him. He pictured himself saying, ‘There is nothing at all wrong with our laws and institutions and our constitution, which are all democratic and enlightened. What is wrong is that they are not enforced, by people who do not consider themselves bound by them.’ The General kicked a stone into a shrub and watched bats the size of hawks wheeling and veering among the ruins. He laughed to himself: ‘I have become a kind of guerrilla myself. I have soldiers who are not strictly under my command, I am acting without the permission of General Ramirez.’ He pictured his Commander-in-Chief in his imagination, and thought, ‘I never esteemed that man anyway. He is not a soldier, he is a politician. I wonder if Remedios would have praised what I am doing. Or would she resent me for stealing her thunder?’ He returned to his bed-roll and lay turning over his plans in his head until he fell asleep to dream of Heliconius butterflies.
At eleven o’clock the following morning the convoy of trucks stopped outside the gates of the Ex-Officers’ Wing of the Army School of Electricial and Mechanical Engineering. Number Four Platoon poured out of the first vehicle and overpowered the two astonished guards at the sentry box. The gates were opened and the convoy rolled into the courtyard and halted. As the Portachuelo Guards ran into the building the lorries, one by one, did three-point turns, until all of them were facing the gates, ready to go.
As predicted, there was no resistance. The torturers were working in shirt-sleeves when the platoon commanders burst in on them with their men, disarmed them, and made them lie face-down on the floor. Asado, terrified and sweating, was made to hand over all the keys, and made to accompany a sergeant to unlock every door and cupboard in the wing.
The Guards were shocked and nauseated by what they found. The stench of burnt flesh, of faeces, of sweat, urine and fear, made it almost insupportable to be in there at all, and everywhere there were fetid pools of putrefying blood and excrement. Some of the soldiers put their rifle-butts through the bars of the cell windows and smashed the glass to let in some fresh air, and none of them knew what to do with the prisoners who, naked and skeletal, huddled apathetically against the walls and watched them vacantly with the eyes of those already dead. Some of them were indeed already dead; General Fuerte himself was able to identify the bodies of Regina Olsen and the Mad Capitan in a room full of entangled corpses awaiting disposal. ‘We cannot do much for them,’ said the General. ‘Leave them.’
The prisoners were pitifully wounded; most of the men had been crudely castrated, so that their scrota hung in rotting tatters. All of them were covered in a patchwork of bruises, burns, whiplashes. Some of them had broken teeth and missing eyes and ears, and others had missing fingers and toes. The soldiers found them easy to lead, even though they thought they were being led to more torture. ‘I don’t know anything,’ they said, as the orderlies washed them gently in the baths, ‘I don’t know anything.’
The Corporal from Number Three Platoon found a room with ‘War Chest’ on the door which was filled to the ceiling with clothes, and he and four men brought armfuls of them to the changing rooms of the baths whilst the others of the platoon dressed the passive prisoners in whatever they could find from the heap that roughly fitted.
At the gate the soldiers of Number Four Platoon arrested El Verdugo who was returning from the shops, and the soldiers of Number Two Platoon carried out the non-walking prisoners to the lorries. These prisoners thought they were being carried off for disposal, and those who could still weep or call out, did so.
From the Electrical Wing of the school two instructors watched the scene at a window. ‘I wonder what is going on now,’ said one.
‘Don’t ask,’ replied the other. ‘Don’t even think about it.’
General Fuerte entered the conference room where the torturers were being held. All in all there were fifteen men, and the General recognised Asado, who also recognised him.
‘General!’ exclaimed Asado, and he sprang to his feet and saluted.
‘I remember you,’ said the General. ‘You won the Medal of Honour at the Officer Training College.’
The General turned to a corporal. ‘
Take two men and ensure that every telephone is disconnected. After that, delegate six men to carry out all the filing cabinets to the lorries.’ He turned back to Asado. ‘Sit down, man, I do not return salutes to barbarians.’
The General left the Company Comandante in charge and departed in three lorries loaded with the wounded. He drove to the Hospital for Sick Soldiers, having discovered that all the civilian ones were closed, and ordered the medics who were hanging around to get the patients off the trucks. He went to the reception desk and spoke to a young woman of the Army Medical Regiment. She gave him a pile of forms. He picked one up and found that it was three pages long. ‘You must fill in one for every patient,’ she told him. The General dropped the pile of paper heavily on to her desk. ‘No,’ he said. ‘You can fill them in or ignore them as you please. I have too many patients for all that.’
‘I must insist,’ replied the young woman. ‘How many do you have?’
‘About sixty,’ he said, and then added, ‘and you are in no position to insist.’ He tapped the insignia on the shoulder of his combat jacket. ‘Do you know what that means?’
The girl looked at it. ‘It means you are an officer.’
‘It means I am a general!’ he said fiercely. ‘And it means that if you or your hospital do not set yourselves in motion immediately, I will bring in my guardsmen and have you all arrested. Now, move!’
The intimidated girl rang through to the casualty department and soon the hospital was in a flurry of activity. The girl stood beside the General with an appalled and wondering expression on her face as she surveyed the human wreckage that was going by on the stretchers. ‘Who were they?’ she asked, speaking as if they were already dead.
‘Terrorist victims,’ said the General.
‘I am sorry I did not recognise your insignia,’ said the girl. ‘I have never seen a general in combat gear before.’
The General returned to the Army School of Electrical and Mechanical Engineering, and soon the convoy was heading back to Valledupar, having locked up the gates of the school.
That evening General Ramirez tried to telephone Asado and found the line dead. He sent round a motorcycle courier, who reported that the place was locked up and unguarded. Ramirez sent round a small body of pyragues, who reported that it was as deserted as the Marie Celeste. ‘Except for some dead bodies.’ Ramirez felt more than ever that his power was slipping away, and he tore the nail off his forefinger and chewed it meditatively whilst the cuticle bled.
Despite the attentions of the medical orderlies, three of the walking wounded died on the bumpy and prolonged journey, from the effects of internal bleeding. The rest of them Fuerte left at the Valledupar Military Hospital with strict instructions that their admission was to be kept confidential ‘on the Highest Authority’. He devoted a week to interviewing the torturers and going through the information in the filing cabinets. The girls in the office were delighted to see him, until they realised how much work they now had to do. They were ordered to photostat twice every paper in the cabinets, and address one copy to the address of each ‘next of kin’ as entered on the forms. They were to bundle the second copies in alphabetical order and address each parcel to the New York Herald. The originals General Fuerte put into a bank vault in Asuncion.
He flew to Merida and posted his bundles and his copies for relatives, and then flew back to Valledupar to organise the secret but legal court-martial of all the torturers, with himself and the Brigadier presiding. To save time and energy he decided to try them all at once, as the evidence was the same for all of them, the witnesses were the same, the excuses were the same, and the sentence was to be the same.
Fuerte and the Brigadier brought in one witness after another from those who were in the Valledupar Military Hospital. The General quoted long passages he had copied from the files.
He had to remind the Comandante frequently of his obligation to defend the prisoners to the best of his ability, but the latter found the task repulsive, and repeated what the prisoners had already repeated many times. ‘They were acting under orders.’ The General found out very quickly what he already knew, that the orders came from General Ramirez. Asado said, ‘But it can never be proved. The service was unofficial.’
The General tapped his pen on the table. ‘It is very easily proved,’ he said. ‘You did not destroy all his orders as instructed. I have them handwritten by him, as left by you in your filing cabinets.’
‘Then you know, Sir, that it was not our fault. We did our duty according to our orders.’
After several days of the hearing, the General and the Brigadier decided to call an end to what had become a tedious charade. They called in the fifteen torturers for sentence. It was the Brigadier who spoke.
‘During the Nuremberg Trials it became established as a principle of International Law that “acting under orders” is not an excuse for the kinds of atrocities you have daily committed under your own admission and according to the sworn testimony of witnesses. This court finds you guilty on all charges: of murder, false imprisonment, illegal abduction, assault, malicious wounding, theft, burglary, breaking and entering, rape, false arrest, obeying illegal orders and so on and so on. General Fuerte will now pass sentence.’
General Fuerte put down his pen and looked at the torturers solemnly. ‘The standard sentence for crimes of this kind is, according to the Military Penal Code, that you should be put to death by firing squad.’
The torturers found their knees beginning to shake, and their lips to quiver. Asado felt panic arise in his bowels, and he could scarcely restrain himself from defecating.
‘However,’ continued the General, ‘I am going to use against you methods similar to those that you have used against others.’
The General paused again, and then continued. ‘Your methods remind me of medieval times, and therefore I will pass a medieval sentence to fit your crimes. No doubt you have heard of trial by ordeal; people used to be forced to plunge their hands into boiling water, or to walk across burning coals. I sentence you to trial by ordeal.’
When the men were led out, the Brigadier turned to the General. ‘What do we do about Ramirez?’
‘Nothing yet,’ said the General. ‘I have released all the papers to the foreign press. No doubt he will resign and then be arrested and tried legally. If that does not happen we will have to arrest him ourselves and try him by court-martial.’
‘An internal coup?’
‘Exactly.’
The General returned to his quarters and fed his cat, which in an astonishingly small amount of time had grown to the size of a puma. He went to the stable and fed Maria with cane leaves, and then he took the cat for a walk with Papagato and the other animals.
That evening the torturers were flown several hundred kilometres over the jungle and thrown out of the aeroplane. They floated down on their parachutes, to become entangled in the trees of the territory of the Chuncho tribe, a neolithic people who still practised six-month trial-marriages, and cannibalism.
38
* * *
DAYS OF WONDERS, DAYS OF DEBILITATION
DAWN FOUND THE wanderers shivering with cold and with fevers. They huddled despondently around their little fires, chewing guava jelly and blocks of panel a to get themselves going, and complaining of headaches. The air was so cold and so pure that it hurt to draw breath, but most of the plainsfolk had never before seen the vapour of their breath condense, so they took deep breaths and puffed their cheeks to watch themselves create fog, exclaiming ‘Whooba!’ and laughing at the other people enveloped in their own mist. The cattle too had never seen it before, and jumped nervously at every exhalation, while the cats tried to play with it, sitting back on their haunches and flailing with their paws. There was also a low mist on the ground up to the height of their knees, so that everybody seemed to be walking on a cloud, like the dark shadows of angels, or lost spirits waiting at the gates of life. When the sun rose rapidly below them at the eastern end of the valle
y people gaped, for never before had they been so high above the sun; the mist about their feet began to rise up to their thighs and then to their waists, so that the children could not see and the adults were cut in half. When the mist reached their heads everyone who was standing sat down to be able to see anything at all and it was as if they had descended into a twilight, for the sky had disappeared and it had grown half dark.
Suddenly the mist vanished and the day lightened. As the sun began to thaw their bones the people shivered again, as they had on waking, and had to goad themselves into activity. They brewed coffee, wrapped their possessions into their packs, filled their canteens and their gourds at the stream, and began to tie the animals back into their train. The horses and mules seemed to be perfectly fit, but the great ceibu cattle were obviously suffering from their night in the unaccustomed cold; their eyes were rheumy, their chests rattled, and their nostrils were dripping. Don Emmanuel inspected them with concern, as most of them were his, and he was sentimental about them. He resolved that somehow he would have to protect them at night against the frost, or many of them would die, especially as the trek would take away their fat.
Don Emmanuel had been very surprised when he had heard that Dona Constanza was with the guerrillas, and he was even more surprised upon conversing with her to find that she had discarded her oligarchic manners, had become the lover of a campesino, and now found his ribaldry amusing and a pretext for badinage. The first thing she had said upon seeing him was, ‘Hola cabron! And how are your dingleberries? Do they still adorn your nether parts?’
‘Indeed they do,’ he replied, ‘I am seeking volunteers to pluck them off.’
‘Then,’ said Constanza, ‘you will find here many of your old friends from the whorehouses to oblige you.’