E-text prepared by Mark C. Orton, Mary Meehan, and the Online DistributedProofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net)
Transcriber's note:
Extensive research indicates the copyright on this book was not renewed.
THE FIVE ARROWS
by
ALLAN CHASE
Random House - New York
_Chapter one_
The governor's wife pointed across the bay to a speck in the black sky.Ground lights in Catanzas were focusing their blue shafts on the speck,moving as the plane moved, one light trying to lead the ship.
A thin stream of glowing red and orange tracer bullets soared up at theplane from the Catanzas side of the bay. A moment passed before theGovernor's guests on the terrace of La Fortaleza could hear the muffledthud-thud of the distant ground batteries. Someone, the wife of avisiting government official, exclaimed, "My goodness, I've only seenthis in the newsreels before!"
Now the plane veered, slowly, and the lights from the San Juan sidejoined the Catanzas batteries in pinning the plane to the dark clouds.The sleeve target fastened to the tail of the plane could now be seenfrom the terrace. Most of the Governor's guests gasped as the firstbright jets of tracers missed the silver sleeve and sailed into theblack void above it. The ack-ack batteries were speaking with moreharshness now; one of them, planted between two brick buildings, addedcrashing echoes to their own reports as the guns went off.
The bombing of Pearl Harbor was still very much a topic of conversationon the island; the submarine nets in the bay were joked about at thedinner table, but the jokes arose from a profound sense of gratitude forthe nets, the planes, the ships which were the island's defenses againstthe undersea raiders that stalked the sea lanes between the ports of themainland and San Juan.
The plane shifted course again, now headed directly toward La Fortaleza.Through the increasing din of the ground guns, the Governor's youngmilitary aide, Lieutenant Braga, could barely hear the ring of thetelephone nearest the terrace. He took the call, then returned to theterrace and tapped one of the guests on the shoulder. "It's for you, Mr.Hall," he said. "It's Tom Harris at Panair."
Matthew Hall stood up quietly and walked into the cavernous receptionroom. He walked carefully, with the steel-spring tread of a man whoseems to expect the floor to blow up under him at any moment. Forthirty-three years Matthew Hall had walked as other men. Since he wasnot conscious of his new walk, he could not say when it had become partof him. His friends had first noticed it in Paris, in '39, but hadexpected it to wear off as soon as the prison pallor disappeared. Thepallor had gone; the walk remained.
Hall's head and shoulders and hands were part of this walk. He movedwith his head forward and his shoulders hunched, with his hands slightlycocked, almost like a fighter slowly advancing to mid-ring. Theshoulders were broad and thick, so broad that although Hall was of morethan average height they made him appear shorter and chunky.
The face of Matthew Hall had changed, too, with his walk. There were theobvious changes: the deep channel of a scar on his broad forehead, thesmaller one on his right jaw. The nose had changed twice, the first timein 1938 when it was broken in San Sebastian. It had swelled enormouslyand then knit badly and nearly two years later a New York surgeon haddone an expensive job of rebreaking and resetting the nose. Some boneshad been taken out and the once classic lines were now slightlyflattened. The scars and the dented nose blended strangely well with thejaws that had always been a bit too long and the soft brown poet's eyeswhich had so often betrayed Hall. With his eyes, Hall spoke hiscontempt, his anger, his amusement, his joy. The eyes unerringly spokehis inner feelings; they were always beyond his control.
Changes more subtle than the scars and the flattened nose had come overHall's face within the past few years. It now had a queer, angry cast.His lips seemed to be set in a new and almost permanent grimace ofbitterness. Also the right side of his face, the cheek and the mouth,had a way of twitching painfully when Hall was bothered and upset. Andyet, as Governor Dickenson had already noted, Hall was not a completelyembittered man. More often than not, his eyes would light up with a lookof amused irony, the look of a man much moved by an immense private jokehe would be glad to share with his friends if he but knew how to tell itproperly.
When Hall had risen to leave the terrace, the Governor noticed that hischeek was twitching, but once he was alone in the reception room, awayfrom the sight of the tracers and the target plane, Hall's face grewcalm again. He sat down in the green armchair near the phone, picked upthe receiver. "Yes, Tom," he said, "any luck?"
"Sure. I busted open a seat for you on the San Hermano plane fortomorrow at six."
"Was it much trouble, Tom?"
"Not much." Tom Harris laughed. "We had to throw Giselle Prescott off tomake room for you. Know her?"
"God, no! But thanks a lot."
"I'll pick you up in the morning then. Good night, Matt."
Hall put the receiver back on the cradle. He sat back in the soft chair,oblivious of the crashing guns, the hum of the plane's engines, theothers on the terrace. Only one thing was in his mind now--San Hermano.
It was some time before the young Puerto Rican lieutenant slippedgingerly into the room. "Mr. Hall," he said, softly, "everything O.K.?"
Hall smiled warmly. "My God," he asked, "you don't think the guns droveme in here?"
The officer blushed. "Fix you a drink?" he asked.
Hall shook his head, drew two Havanas from his jacket. "No, thanks.Cigar? It's from the one box I remembered to buy in Havana."
The boy was a non-smoker. He lit a match for Hall, waited until theolder man relaxed with the burning cigar. Politely, he said, "I knowyou've been through plenty, Mr. Hall. I'm a soldier, but if ..."
"Plenty? Me?"
The lieutenant nodded. "_The Revenger_," he said, hesitantly. "I--I readyour book."
"Oh, that," Hall said. "_The Revenger_." So _The Revenger_ was plenty!
"If there's anything I can get you ..."
The boy's voice seemed to come from far away and Hall realized that hehimself was staring into space and that the lieutenant must have satthere for a full minute waiting for an answer. "I'm sorry," he said."I'm really sorry. I guess I just get this way once in a while."
"It's my fault," Braga protested. "I should have known how hard it mustbe for you to talk about--it."
"_De nada_," Hall laughed. "I made a lecture tour last year and spentfive nights a week talking about it for months. It's just thatI'm--well, that I just catch myself staring at nothing at the craziesttimes. Maybe I do need that drink. What's in the shaker there--Daiquiri?Good." He poured two Daiquiris from the jar on the sideboard, handed oneto the lieutenant. "I know you don't drink, either," he said. "But I'mhaving this drink to toast victory--and you're a soldier."
When they touched glasses, the boy saw that amused look in Hall's eyes,the look he had seen earlier at the dinner table when one of thevisiting officials had expressed such innocent amazement at the enormityof his first taxi bill in San Juan. "I'd better go back out there when Ifinish this drink," he said. "I'm glad nothing's wrong with you."
"You're a right guy, Lieutenant. Thanks for looking in." Hall returnedto his chair as the boy walked out to the terrace. So _The Revenger_ wasplenty! And the kid, how old was he? Twenty? Not a day more. Which madehim eighteen when the Nazi torpedo planes peeled off over the Africanskies and then roared in to send their tin fish into the guts of HisMajesty's own _Revenger_. Which made him fourteen when the fightingbegan, fourteen when the German pilot officers clicked their heels andmouthed the new phrase "_Arriba Espana_" and flew the Moors from SpanishMorocco to the mainland and touched off the shooting stages of World WarII. "_Ay, Teniente_," he muttered, "you've made me feel old as hell.Older
."
Hall leaned back in his chair, tried to blow a series of smoke rings. Hethought: But I'm not old. I've just seen things and done things and hadthings done to me. I'm not old at all.
* * * * *
After years of anonymity in various city rooms in the States, a briefturn as a byline correspondent in Washington, a still briefer career asa Broadway playwright, Matthew Hall had drawn an assignment asthird-string man for the World Press in Paris. That was in 1935, when hewas crowding thirty. The job had introduced him to Europe, and carriedhim to Geneva, to Belgrade, to Bucharest, to Stockholm. Paris was thejournalistic capital of the Continent; when things happened outside ofParis, it was a Paris man who was sent to the scene to cover. There hewould find that the office had adequate coverage in the permanent man,and if he had any curiosity or craftsman's pride he would try to get thestory behind the story. Hall had both. They led him to the strangehalf-world of tipsters, hounded opposition leaders, minor officials ofministries who would talk and produce documents for a fee, candid andcynical free-lance agents, wise old frightened politicians who sensedthe coming catastrophe in their bones, correct and stiff Nazi advanceagents and politely lavish native fascists who mixed queer brews forforeign correspondents. They were the _sources close to a key ministry,the influential elder statesmen, the prominent industrialists whosenames cannot be used_ who figured so prominently in the inside-Europedispatches of the era.
July, 1936, had found Hall in Nice spending a long week-end as the guestof a prominent refugee banker from Germany. The banker was the "inside"prophet of the month in Parisian newspaper circles. His gospel was theslightly shopworn one about German industry being fed up with Hitler andwilling to settle on Goering, Danzig and a few worthless colonies inAfrica as the price for eliminating the "extreme Nazis" and returning tothe family of Europe. "He's a damned Nazi himself," Hall had declaredwhen the invitation reached his office, but the bureau manager wasmissing no bets. "I don't care what he is, Matt. He's a story. He'snews. He's what they want to read about in Washington and in London andin Paris."
Hall never wrote his story on the refugee banker (who later turned up asa Nazi economist overlord in Denmark). On a blistering Sunday Paris hadcalled him by phone. Hell was popping in Madrid. The regular Madrid manwas vacationing in the States. "Get to Madrid, Matt. Looks like you'llbe busy there for a couple of weeks until it blows over."
Like many of his American colleagues, Hall traveled to Madrid duringthat first week of the war with the idea that in less than a month oneside or another would have been installed in power and he himself wouldbe back in Paris listening to the latest faker peddling the newest lineof disguised Nazism from Berlin. But Hall was an honest man. What he sawinterested and then intrigued and then enraged him. "This is no SpanishCivil War," he wrote to the Paris office in a confidential memo sent bycourier. "This is the start of the second World War. It's the Germansand the Italians against the Spaniards. Maybe I'm crazy, but it looks tome like the British and the French are backing the fascists, while theRussians are trying to help the Republicans. How about sending someonein to cover the shooting for a week while I write a big story alongthese lines?"
He was answered in due time. "Stick to the military conflict between theNationalists and the Loyalists. And don't send us any Red propaganda."
That was in October, when Caballero was preparing to quit Madrid inpanic, and the Fifth Army was calmly preparing to hold the city,Caballero or no Caballero. Hall had long since lost his magnificent WPobjectivity. Through the open mails he sent a letter of resignation toParis. Antin in the Censura held the letter up, sent for Hall. TheSpaniard hemmed and hawed and cleared his throat a dozen times and thenhe got up from his desk and embraced Hall and told him to sit down.Hall's Spanish was pretty good by then, good enough for Antin to speakto him in fluent Spanish rather than halting English. "The English I canread with my eyes. The Spanish I speak with my heart."
Was it that Hall was resigning because he loved the Republic? Yes, Iguess you could call it that. (You could also call it a good craftsman'sstubborn ideas about how to cover a war, but you didn't.) Did Hallrealize that, if he quit, an enemy of the Republic might be sent to takehis place? No, Hall didn't think. Come to think of it, though, theoffice had Cavanaugh and Raney available and those two Jew-haters andMussolini-lovers would be no friends of the Republic. You are a friend,a _companero_, it is right that you know. We have so many problems withthe foreign press. McBain from New York, we know he is a spy, he haslinks with the Falange. If we arrest him, the world hollers Red Terror.So we watch him, keep all his letters, hold up his cables. Thank God heis a drunkard; two SIM men keep him drunk most of the time. Maybe hisoffice will fire him. You are a friend. You write the truth. Even alittle truth by a friend whose editor chops up his cables helps theRepublic.
Hall tore up his letter of resignation. When the Republic capturedthousands of Italians after Guadalajara and Bruejega, Hall filed longstories based on interviews with the Blackshirts. When the Republiccaptured Nazi Condor officers and men at Belchite, Hall sent photographsof their documents to Paris with his stories.
New York kicked, and Paris warned Hall repeatedly. Finally Paristransferred him to the Franco side. That was at the end of '38, when theRepublicans had seen their hopes dashed at Munich and the only thingthat kept them going was the feeling that they could hold out until theNazi Frankenstein finally turned on London and Paris. "Then France willhave to rush arms and maybe a few divisions to us and the British fleetwill have to patrol the Mediterranean and the Russian planes, unable toget through now, will be able to come in through France and through theMediterranean." Antin figured it out that way, told it to Hall the weekbefore some nice clean crusaders for Christianity let him have it with atommy gun in the back in a Barcelona cafe.
The Falangistas were very glad to have Hall behind their lines. Theirfriends pulled some wires in New York and Washington and, after twomonths, Hall was fired, but by then his notebook was growing thicker andhe elected to stay as a free lance. He was seeing the face of fascismfor the first time, he wrote, and seeing it at close range. He wouldstay, job or no job. He stayed, and the Gestapo in San Sebastian wroteout an order and a rat-faced little aristocrat with an embroidered goldyoke and arrows on his cape was studying Hall's notes and smirking likea villain in a bad movie.
There were no charges and no explanations. They just slapped Hall into acell in solitary, and once a day they handed him a bucket for slops andonce a day he got a chunk of bread or a thin chick-pea stew. In thebeginning he had hollered for the American consul, but the German guardwould grin and say, "_No entiendo Espanol, Ich sprech kein Englisch_,"and finally Hall just settled down to waiting for the end of the war.
Every now and then a smooth German major would have him brought out forquestioning; that scar on his head and the scar on his chin were grimmementos of those sessions. The Spaniards were bad but the Germans wereworse. The Italians were just hysterical. There was the day the Italianofficer made the mistake of getting too close and Hall clipped him witha weak right hook. The Blackshirt screamed like a woman and clung to hiseye; that was when they tied him to the wall and let him have it withthe steel rods on his back.
And then, in April, the Republic keeled over in its own blood and thefascists decided to be generous to celebrate their victory. The Axis wasnow openly boasting that it had run the Spanish show; the worst thatHall could do would be to play into their hands by writing about howtough fascism was on any man fool enough to oppose the New Order. Theywere generous, they were fair. They gave him a practically new suit ofclothes, they returned his three hundred odd dollars, they even returnedhis notebook with nearly all of its original notes.
Hall went to Paris. He spent a week soaking in warm baths and eating andavoiding the WP crowd. During the week he cabled a New York bookpublisher he had met in Madrid in '36, when he had joined a group ofAmerican intellectuals attending an anti-fascist congress. He offered toturn out a book on his exp
eriences as a correspondent and a prisoner inFranco Spain. It was a week before he got an answer, but the answer camewith a draft of five hundred dollars.
The swelling had gone down in his nose by then, but he still had tobreathe through his mouth. A doctor who'd looked at it wanted a hundredbucks for operating, but it meant two weeks of doing nothing but gettingfixed up, and Hall hated to wait. "Later," he said, "later, when Ifinish my book."
He poured his notes and his guts into the book, and finished it in amonth. When he was done he borrowed some money from a friend in theParamount office and got a Clipper seat to New York.
His publisher, Bird, liked the book and rushed it to press. He also gaveHall another five hundred and sent him to his own doctor to have hisnose fixed up.
It was a good book, perhaps good enough to justify Bird's gamble, onlyit reached the critics three weeks after the Nazi panzer divisions wereravaging Poland and the smart boys in Paris were wearing smartercorrespondents' uniforms and filing fulsome stories on the genius ofGamelin and Weygand. "We'll have to face it, Matt," Bird said, "no onebut you and I give a damn about Spain right now. I'm taking back copiesleft and right from the booksellers. No, the hell with the advances. Thewar's far from over. You'll do another book for me, and we'll make itall up."
Through Bird, Hall got a job as a war correspondent for a Chicago paper.They shipped him to London, where he stewed in his own juices formonths, and then to Cairo to join the fleet. Hall was assigned to the_Revenger_ and, when the Nazis sank her, he spent some three days on araft with a handful of survivors. One of them died of his wounds on theraft, and another went raving mad and slit his own throat with the topof a ration tin.
Hall filed a story on the experience when he was brought back to Cairo,and Bird cabled "That's your new book." It was an easy book to write. Hetook a room at Shepheard's and pounded it out in three weeks. TheBritish censors liked it as "a tribute to British grit" and arranged fora captain attached to a military mission bound for Washington by planeto deliver the manuscript personally to Bird. The story was still hotwhen the script reached New York. Bird sold the serial rights to a bignational weekly that same day for thirty thousand dollars. A lectureagency cabled offering a guarantee of a fantastic sum for a three-monthlecture tour. A book club chose _The Revenger_, the critics sang itspraises, and Bird bought himself a house in the country.
Hall quit his job and made the lecture tour and wound up with a fat bankaccount and a permanent appreciation of the value of a chance plop inthe ocean. For the first time in his life, he found himself with enoughmoney to do exactly what he wanted to do. The Army doctors had shown himto the nearest door, but he had offers from magazines and syndicates toreturn to the war zones, and the radio wanted him as a commentator.
It was Bird who first learned of Hall's new plans. And Bird understood."The Spanish War was round one," Hall told him. "South America was oneof the stakes. The Falange had an organization in the Latin countries.The Heinies used to brag about it to me in San Sebastian. I'm going toSouth America to see it for myself. Maybe there's a book in it, maybethere isn't. I can afford to find out."
Cuba had been the first stop on this odyssey. There Hall had had sometough sledding, met some Spanish Republicans who knew him from Madrid,won the aid of a group of young Cuban officials and written two angryand documented magazine pieces.
From Havana, Hall had flown to Puerto Rico.
Hall had stopped thinking. The reverie into which the lieutenant hadplunged him passed into a rapt consideration of the imperfect smokerings he was blowing toward the ceiling.
Dickenson joined him. "Well?" he asked. "Is it San Hermano tomorrow?"
"I'm afraid so, Dick."
"I'm sorry to see you leave. We figured you'd stay for at least a month.What's so urgent in San Hermano?"
"That's what I mean to find out. All I know is what I read in thepapers." He handed the Governor two copies of the San Hermano_Imparcial_ he had found on a library table in the reception room whilehaving a cocktail before dinner. They were the papers which had made himcall Harris at Panair.
The first issue was three weeks old. It described the visit of anAmerican Good-Will Commission to San Hermano, and told how the missionwas received by Enrique Gamburdo, the Vice-President, rather than byAnibal Tabio, the President. In an oblique manner, the story went on todeny the "widespread rumor" that Tabio had deliberately insulted theAmericans by not receiving them personally.
"I don't like the way they denied the rumor," Hall said. "I know thatthe paper is _imparcial_ on the fascist side only."
The other edition of _Imparcial_ was three days old. It was the latestcopy available. It carried as its lead story the news that since Tabio'sillness had taken a drastic turn for the worse, Gamburdo had prevailedupon a great Spanish doctor, Varela Ansaldo, to fly from Philadelphia toSan Hermano in an attempt to save the President's life.
"And?" the Governor asked.
"I'm not sure. But it looks to me like a deliberate attempt to lay asmelly egg in Tabio's nest. Anyway, I did a little checking with Harris.I figured I'd be able to meet Ansaldo's plane, and I was right. The SanHermano Clipper overnights in San Juan, you know. Ansaldo is sleeping atthe Escambrun tonight. Tomorrow we'll board the ship for San Hermanotogether."
"I still don't get it, Matt. Do you know this Ansaldo?"
"No. But he's evidently been invited to San Hermano by Gamburdo. And Ifound out a few things about Gamburdo in Havana," Hall said. "Sometop-ranking Falange chiefs in the Americas always spoke highly of him intheir letters. Especially the letters marked confidential."
"There you go again!"
"Don't. You know I'm not crazy."
"But Matt, neither is Gamburdo crazy. He wouldn't dare do what you'reimplying."
"Maybe. But I'm not thinking of Gamburdo as much as I am of Tabio. Ilike Anibal Tabio, like him a lot. I met him for the first time inGeneva in '35, when he was Foreign Minister. Then I met him again in'36, when he and Vayo and Litvinov were hammering away at the fat catsbacking Franco. He was a real guy, Dick. One of the few statesmen alivewho not only knew that the earth is round but also that the people onthis round earth like to eat and wear decent clothes and send their kidsto college.
"I remember how in '37, after Halifax yawned all through his speech andthen led the rest of the delegates in voting against Vayo's proposals,Tabio sat down with me in a little bar and ordered a light beer and toldme very quietly that this was his cue. 'I must go home,' he told me,'and see that it doesn't happen to my country.' That's how he pulled uphis stakes and went back to San Hermano and ran for President."
"He's good, Matt. I know that."
"He's damn good. He's the best of the anti-fascist leaders on theContinent right now, Dick. He deserves all the help he isn't gettingfrom us."
The Governor put the paper down with a sigh. "I'll tell you a secret,Matt," he said. "But it's really secret. You know that there's going tobe a Pan-American conference on foreign policy in Havana in five weeks.Well, some of the smarter heads in Washington are getting worried. We'resending a delegation to the conference to ask all the nations down hereto break with the Axis. And some of us are afraid that if Tabiois--well, not able to pick the San Hermano delegation, his governmentwill remain neutral."
Hall stood up and began pacing between the couch and the chair. Hepulled out a large white handkerchief and mopped the sweat on his face,his neck, his quivering hands. "God damn them all to hell," he said,"they're moving in on us in our own backyard and when you try to say aword in Washington they spit in your eye and tell you Franco is aneutral and a friend."
Dickenson drew a deep breath, exhaled slowly and audibly. "What's it allabout, Matt?" he asked, softly. "Where does San Hermano come in?"
"I don't know a mucking thing yet. All I know is that it stinks to highheaven. Listen, Dick, I'm not crazy. You know that. In Washington theyact as if I'm crazy or worse when I try to tell them." Hall put his handto the twitching right side of his face as if to keep it still.
Hisoutburst had completely dried his throat. He went to the sideboard,threw some ice cubes into a giant glass, poured soda over the ice.
The Governor watched him swallow the contents in huge gulps. "Better sitdown, Matt," he said. "You'll blow a valve."
"I'm all right," he said. He put the glass down on the floor, ran thehandkerchief over his neck. "There's one thing I do know, and it'skilling me. I know the Falange is in this. It's all I have to know. Iremember reading a fascist paper in jail in San Sebastian. There was abig map on the back page, a map showing Spain as the center of theSpanish World. An artist had superimposed the five arrows of the Falangeover the face of Spain. The article under the map said that while one ofthe arrows pointed to Madrid, two pointed to the Philippines and theothers pointed to Latin America. They weren't kidding, Dick. When theJaps marched into Manila they decorated the Philippine Falange for thefifth-column job the Falangistas performed for Hirohito. And there aretwenty Falangist cells in Latin America for every one cell they had inManila on December 6, 1941.
"And why not, Dick? It's the Germans who've always run the Falange.Today they run Spain. And they also run the Exterior Falange set-up.Maybe Falangismo as a philosophy is phony as all hell, and maybe itscreed of Hispanidad, with all its blah about Latin America returning tothe Spanish Empire, is just as phony. Maybe it doesn't make sense to usgringos. I'll grant that. But it is a nice Nazi horse on the dumbSpanish aristocrats who do Hitler's dirty work in the Americas. InGerman hands it's one of the dynamics of this war. I've seen it inoperation, and I know. It's the gimmick that makes rich Spaniards fueland hide submarines in the Caribbean--you know that for a fact yourself.It's the new amalgam which makes 'em look to Holy Mother Spain as thecore of a new empire, it's ..."
"But granting all this, Matt, why must you go to San Hermano?"
Hall swallowed some soda. He put the glass back on the floor, grabbedthe San Hermano _Imparcial_ from the Governor's hands. Slowly, hecrushed the paper and held it in front of Dickenson's face. "Do you knowwho publishes _El Imparcial_?" he asked. "I'll tell you. It's a fascistnamed Fernandez. In San Sebastian, during the war, he strutted all overtown in a Falange officer's uniform browning his nose with all thetop-ranking lice, the Germans, the Italians, the Franco crowd. He wasthere for months, making radio speeches and public appearances andgetting cramps in the right arm from holding it up in the stiff-armsalute. I saw him a dozen times, if I saw him once."
"Jose Fernandez? I met him at a conference in Rio. He seemed like apleasant enough chap," the Governor said.
"They're all pleasant. They can afford to be. You never met Ribbentropand Otto Abetz, Dick. They were the most charming men in Europe beforethe war. But listen, last week in Havana I looked at a collection ofpictures taken from the files of the chief of the Falange delegation forthe Americas. There was one picture of a banquet held by the Falange inSan Hermano late in 1936. It was a secret affair, only insiders andleaders. And there, on the dais, was Licenciado Enrique Gamburdo, big aslife."
"Gamburdo!"
"Sure. It was a secret affair, all right. Not a word in the papers, andeveryone present sworn to secrecy by a Bishop who was among the honoredguests." Hall dried the sweat on his hands again. "But always at theseaffairs there's a man with a camera. Usually he's a Gestapo Heinie.Sometimes he's a Gestapo Spaniard or even a Gestapo Latin-American. Apicture, just one picture, has to be made. It goes to the German consulor the Falange chief of the country and they have to forward it to theIbero-American Institute in Berlin. The pictures back up the reports,you see, and, besides, when you have a picture of a deacon trucking witha doxie in a bordello it's a good thing to threaten to show the deacon'swife if the deacon decides to return to the paths of righteousness."
"But are you sure, Matt?"
"I'm a good reporter. My job is to remember unimportant things, and toremember them well when they become important. If I'm wrong, I'll findout for myself in San Hermano."
The Governor accepted one of Hall's cigars. "God," he said, "I hopeyou're wrong, Matt."
Later, back in his hotel room, Hall stripped to his shorts, ran coldwater over his wrists and the back of his neck. He poured some Haitianrum into a glass, drenched it with soda from the pink-and-green nighttable.
Outside, in the darkness, four boys were playing tag. Hall listened tothe whispered padding of their bare feet as they flew from cobblestonesto trolley tracks. He went to the wrought-iron balcony, stood therewatching the undersized kids chasing each other up and down the narrowstreet. Two freighters rode at anchor in the harbor, their gray nosespointing at the pink Customs House. A soldier lurched down the street,barely missing the feet of an old _jibaro_ sleeping in the doorway of adark store.
Hall returned to the desk. He wrote a short note to a friend in agovernment bureau in Havana--merely to say that he was leaving for SanHermano and that for the time being could be reached in care of PanAmerican Airways there--and a similar note to Bird. He decided to lethis other letters wait until he reached San Hermano.
The kids who were playing tag disappeared. The only noise which brokethe silence of the night now was the soft pounding of the presses in thenewspaper plant up the street. Hall sealed his letters and started topack his bags.
The four boys reappeared with a whoop. They carried freshly printedmagazines this time, and, as they ran down the street, first one thenanother took up the mournful cry: "_Puerto Rico Ilustrado!Il-us-traaa-dooohhh!_" They were no longer to be seen when Hall ran outto the balcony to look.
He took a cold shower, then lit one of his Havanas. The mosquito netwhich completely covered his bed annoyed him. He put out the light inorder not to see the bars of the net frame. Silently, he railed againstthe sugar planters and their kept politicos for leaving the island preyto malaria. He had to remind himself that the net was his protectionagainst malaria before he could crawl under the frame, but even then heclimbed into bed with a cigar in his mouth.
The cigar was his protection, his secret weapon, against theclaustrophobia the _mosquitero_ gave him. There were no cigars inFranco's prisons, no cigars and no cool sheets and coiled springmattresses, no soft breezes floating in from a harbor as ancient as theConquistadores.
He lay under the net, naked and uncovered, blowing smoke rings at thecross bars above him. He thought of Anibal Tabio in Geneva, thin as areed, his slender hand pointing to the pile of German and Italiandocuments del Vayo had brought to the League. He thought of Tabio and hethought of his three years in Spain and, thinking, he got worked up allover again.
It was not easy to think of the months of being trapped like an animalin a cage, of being pushed around by smirking men who had the guns, ofwatching the metal inkstand in the hands of the German major the secondbefore it crashed into his own face. No, it was not easy, and the memoryof San Sebastian led to the scarlet memory of the afternoon on theMalecon in Havana less than a month ago when Sanchez had pointed out tohim two leaders of the Falange at a cafe table and he started out tobash their heads together right then and there. Luis and Felix had hadto grab him and wrestle him to the sidewalk, laughing and playing atbeing just three jolly boys who'd had a drink too much instead of twoSpanish Republicans keeping a frenzied American from killing two menthey detested and would gladly have killed themselves.
Hall sat up, shaking, covered with sweat. He crawled out of bed, stoodbarefooted on the tiled floor. An overwhelming feeling of lonelinesscame over him. He was lonely in his person, lonelier still in hisinability to make any of his own people understand the gnawing hates andfears which had taken him first to Havana and then to San Juan andnow--_quien sabe_? And then, realizing with an amused start that he wasthinking in Spanish, he tore the net off the bed, threw the cigar away,and went to sleep.