She didn’t answer immediately. ‘I don’t mean I recognize them. But I am sure they were Ramón’s men.’
‘Just instinct you mean?’
‘They were from the south: strong short men with beardless faces and waxy skin.’
‘Pekinista?’
‘No. In such a mixed society we have a sharp eye for physical differences.’
‘Don’t say anything of this to Angel Paz. He’ll be suicidal if he thinks we’ve wiped out one of Ramón’s patrols.’
‘Why would Ramón send a patrol this far north and tell us nothing about it?’
‘Say what’s on your mind, Inez. Do you think these people were looking for us?’
‘I don’t know, Lucas.’
‘They were a bit trigger-happy,’ Lucas said. ‘Well-armed too. I mean they weren’t behaving like a mission bringing food and comfort to the needy.’
22
THE WHITE HOUSE. ‘Then I don’t know either?’
It had been a fiercely hot summer. The sprinklers could not prevent the White House lawn from fading to the colour of straw. The President was in the sitting-room of the residence, staring out of the big fan-shaped window, but he was not worrying about the lawn. He was thinking of the eleven men caught there by the guards in the last six months. Some were cranks, some were admirers but three of them had been armed. His only consolation was that the stories had not made headlines. Behind him he heard the door open and someone come in. He knew it would be John Curl. Curl was always exactly on time.
‘Did you see all that stuff they brought up here this morning?’ the President asked without turning away from the window.
John Curl was fully occupied with arranging the papers he’d brought with him. The true answer to the President’s question was an unequivocal yes. Curl had carefully vetted every last aspect of the plans the new Secret Service chief had prepared for the President’s trip to California. But if the President had found a big flaw – either real or imagined – in that plan, Curl was not going to be its father.
‘I skimmed through some of the notes he’d prepared,’ Curl said.
‘Notes!’ The President turned round to face his visitor. ‘He came equipped like a Madison Avenue whizkid pitching for General Motors. Graphs, flip charts, time and motion, critical path analysis.’
John Curl smiled. The President was apt to exaggerate when indignant. ‘He’s a good man,’ Curl said.
‘I don’t deny that, John. I don’t deny it for one minute. All I’m saying is: keep him away from me.’
‘You don’t mean that literally, Mr President?’
‘Is protecting the President’s ass such a specialized task that this is the only man who can do it?’
‘No, of course not, Mr President. I’ll find someone else to show you the material.’
The President would not let it go at that. ‘Just for that one Tuesday night shindig, they are strengthening the auditorium roof for the chopper. I get off the chopper and they whisk me from rooftop to podium in an elevator built solely for that purpose. I then deliver my speech from behind bullet-proof glass … Three hundred men? I said, Stalin … Hitler. Not even those guys needed this kind of muscle. What’s happening to us?’
‘It’s no more than was done for President Johnson in the late Sixties.’
‘So that clown told me. And it made me feel like an idiot.’
‘I hope I haven’t …’
‘It’s okay. I pay you to make me feel like an idiot from time to time.’
‘Maybe we should think again about getting rid of him.’
‘Now don’t overdo it, John. Don’t try making me look stupid twice in one minute.’
Curl waited while the President made himself comfortable in his favourite chair. ‘See this, John?’ He held up a long strip of paper rolled up tight in his hand.
‘Yes,’ Curl said guardedly.
‘Not so good, John.’
‘No, Mr President.’ Curl gave his reply a touch of indifference. The President seemed to have become obsessed by Congressional headcounts lately. He reeled through those strips of paper, reading the names and dividing the world into friends and enemies. Curl saw no reason to encourage these irrational fears.
‘Yes, Mr President; no, Mr President. If I was running Boeing or Paramount Pictures all my staff would be running round telling me how great I am; telling each other what a tough job I’ve got. But the Presidency is different. Sometimes I have the feeling that half the West Wing staff think they could do a better job than I’m doing.’
John Curl stiffened. The President seemed to be accusing him of disloyalty. In fact Curl was the most devoted slave any President could have wished for.
‘Not you, John. Not you,’ said the President as he saw Curl’s expression of horror. ‘Come along. Tell me the worst.’
‘It’s about Spanish Guiana. The newspaper cutting. The alleged CIA man. Do you remember?’
‘I think I do,’ the President said sardonically.
‘It’s become a little complicated,’ Curl said.
‘Oh, no.’ The President gave a deep sigh.
‘The story was basically correct,’ Curl said. It was best to get that one over with and then start on the good news.
‘Didn’t I tell you I didn’t want any CIA action down there?’
‘He was there before this thing broke, Mr President. Long before. They were about to pull him out.’
‘Will you explain to me how the editor of some half-assed local newsletter gets to hear things about CIA operations that you don’t know?’
‘It’s all jungle down there,’ said Curl imperturbably. ‘Sometimes agents are out of touch for weeks at a time.’
‘Except for calling this guy at the newsletter you mean?’
‘Have a heart, Mr President.’ Curl made a plaintive face; it was as near as he ever got to clowning his way out of trouble. ‘The newsletter guy took a flyer. I couldn’t make that kind of guess when reporting to you.’ He waited for the President to accept that explanation before continuing. ‘The man they sent there has shown exceptional ability, Mr President. In fact there might be talk of a commendation for him.’ On past occasions such recommendations had helped to smooth things over.
‘Exceptional ability? To do what?’
‘He’s been talking to the MAMista leader: Ramón. We have an agreement permitting Steve Steinbeck to go ahead.’
‘Did you tell Steinbeck?’
It was a trap. ‘No,’ said Curl. ‘These things always come to you first. But Steinbeck is raring to go. He only needs our okay and he’ll do another series of drillings. If that comes up positive, he’ll set up a company to haul it out.’
The President walked across to a side-table and busied himself – looking at his commitments for the rest of the day – while his mind was racing ahead. Curl wondered whether to tell him that the next stage would be a massive defoliating of the whole region of the coca plants but decided to hold it over for another time. There would be a lot of problems on that one.
‘Steinbeck will need all kinds of hardware,’ Curl said. ‘The way it looks at present, all those orders for hardware will be placed where they’ll do the most good.’
The President could not conceal his pleasure. He sat down at his desk and enjoyed telling himself he was the President of the USA. Every day he had to tell himself anew. Even then it was difficult to believe it. If only his father had lived to see him inaugurated.
‘In many ways it’s all working out well,’ said Curl, expressing mild surprise, as if the outcome were not a product of his own hard work. ‘A quick swing through the boondocks, and the big show in California immediately following the announcement of new factory contracts, and your Gallup will be back where it always was.’
‘A Gallup through the boonies,’ said the President.
‘Exactly, Mr President.’ Now was the time, thought Curl, it was always a matter of getting the timing right. ‘And by the way, Mr President, we think it’s ess
ential that the CIA hook their guy out of the jungle without stirring up the media in Tepilo.’ Curl paused. The President said nothing. Curl continued, ‘The best way to do that would be a civilian helicopter off the fantail of a navy destroyer.’
There was a long silence. ‘You know how I feel about that kind of deal.’ The President rubbed his nose. ‘What’s all the rush?’
‘The agreement with the guerrillas has all been verbal. We don’t have anything in writing. I’d like to have the man who made that agreement on ice somewhere. He is, in fact, our piece of paper.’
‘A destroyer would have to go in very close, John. I take it Benz has got some kind of radar down there?’
‘Look at it this way, Mr President: suppose the Benz government got wind of these talks and grabbed our guy and twisted his arm a little … and then put him on TV?’
‘Sounds unlikely, doesn’t it?’
‘The Benz people will not be too pleased to learn that we were talking to the MAMista at the same time we were talking to them. Imagine how we would feel if …’
‘Yeah yeah. Okay, John. You don’t have to draw me a diagram.’
‘If you gave a provisional okay we could put the ship into position and get the helicopter moving. Time could be vital on this one. If the situation changes, the helicopter team gets a free cruise. But if we need them we can activate it at a few minutes’ notice.’
Again the President paused a long time. Cooperation between the US armed services and the CIA was something he’d always opposed. He allowed his conscience to shade a little doubt and reluctance into his voice: ‘Okay. But no paper, no teleprinter from the Crisis Management Center, no memo from you and no phone calls and no computer record with mainframe backups that come to light weeks afterward.’
Curl nodded and smiled. He sat on the edge of a hard chair.
The President smiled too. ‘Okay, smart-ass, but one day I won’t say all that, and you’ll goof.’ He looked up. ‘Joint Chiefs been told?’
‘Not officially.’ Curl’s answer meant that they had all been told off the record as now the President was being told. In fact the Chief of Naval Operations had simply been asked to inform CINCLANT that a civilian helicopter would be taken to a position near the coast of Spanish Guiana and, at a later date, landed aboard again. Coming from Curl such a request was not queried.
‘Then I don’t know either?’
‘That would be best, Mr President.’ Curl put the prompt cards back into his document case. The case held a night action telegram for the CIA in Tepilo and copies to others ‘witting’. On the corner of his copy his secretary had written ‘operation snatch’. Curl remembered that the word had sexual connotations and made a mental note to change it to ‘operation Shanghai’.
‘Tell me afterward,’ said the President. ‘And if it’s a foul-up, bring your head gift-wrapped.’
John Curl seldom answered back to the President, but this time he afforded himself that pleasure. ‘Mr President, any time you walk into Congress with my head on a platter, your tail will be in flames. Pleading ignorance has never yet got a President out of a political hassle.’
‘Just humour me, John.’ The President picked up two heavy reports about tax changes that he would have to understand before his meeting with the Business Council.
Curl stood up, closed his case and locked it. ‘The CIA may get a little over-zealous sometimes, Mr President, but that’s only because they like to have you in the Oval Room. You must forgive them for that kind of zeal.’
‘I don’t need a slow-motion replay of how hard they’re working to keep me in office, John. But the way I read the entrails, that’s also a demonstration of how they can put the skids under me if I don’t play ball.’
‘Yes, Mr President.’ Curl fidgeted awkwardly. Then he closed his case. ‘Unless there’s something else …’
The President began reading the tax report. He did not look up.
23
THE FIRE-FIGHT IN THE JUNGLE. ‘Keep going,’ said Singer.
‘Do you believe in life after death?’ Singer asked. They’d stopped to make camp and were eating the one and only meal for that day. Singer had finished eating – he always finished first – and was rubbing his wrist. The bindings had been taken off but his wrist and ankle were still hurting him.
Paz was eating beans, dried fish and a banana-like fruit that one of the Indians had identified as edible. He didn’t answer. It would probably turn out to be one of Singer’s jokes.
Today had been strenuous. It was the third day of their climb up one of the gentler spurs of the Sierra Sombra. Three times they’d been forced to use ropes. Some of the sections of rock had been as tall as a three-storey house. One of the mules had suffered a broken harness. It had slipped and fallen down the sheer-sided cliff. This feast was the part of that mule’s load that had broken free. Had the mule not dropped six hundred feet, and lodged in a crag, they would have been eating mule.
Neither did Lucas answer. He sat with Inez and could think of nothing but food and sleep.
‘I do,’ Singer said. He was smoking a rolled-up piece of wild tobacco leaf that the Indians always were able to find. ‘I believe in it. I always have.’ He spoke in an intense way, as if he were continuing a conversation they’d been having for a long time. In fact those who knew him well would have been amazed to hear him revealing anything about his private life. Singer had always been obsessionally secretive, even with his colleagues. ‘I’ve got a lovely wife and two kids, Peter and Nancy: seven and five. And a lovely home. What am I doing here, getting myself killed?’
‘And what’s the answer?’ Paz asked.
‘My wife thinks I work for an oil company,’ Singer said. He pinched out his hand-rolled cheroot and then took a leaf from his pocket to wrap it before putting it into his pocket. They had all learned to use the vegetation like a never-ending supply of paper tissues. But here they were on a bald mountain slope. Singer looked up and breathed the night air. The sky was crammed with stars. It was good to see them again. In the jungle they went for days without a glimpse of the sky.
‘Where is Santos?’ Singer asked.
‘Santos thinks this trail has been used recently,’ Inez said.
‘He didn’t tell me that,’ said Paz.
‘I can speak his dialect,’ Inez said.
‘This is a trail?’ Singer said and laughed.
Inez said, ‘He noticed broken vegetation, disturbed earth. He took Novillo and went to look round.’
‘Could be wild pig,’ Lucas said.
‘Santos said that,’ Inez agreed.
‘If he really thought it was pig,’ Singer said, ‘Santos wouldn’t be missing supper.’
‘Men,’ said Inez.
‘A good scout can follow any human trail,’ said Paz.
‘You wouldn’t need tracker dogs to follow us,’ Lucas said. ‘Human excrement. Sweat and woodsmoke. Any fool could find us blindfolded. And you could drive a London double-decker bus through the trail we left on the last climb.’
‘Where did Santos go?’ Singer asked.
‘He said he wanted to go back as far as the cliff edge,’ Paz answered.
‘He’s hoping to spot a fire or something,’ said Inez.
‘Those men on the river,’ Paz said. ‘I keep thinking about them.’
‘They were Ramón’s men,’ Singer said. They all turned their heads to see him better. ‘Ramón figures that I could be a time bomb for him. I sweet-talked him into a deal but once he had time to think about it he could see that the boys in Washington had him in a spot. And Maestro was always against any kind of deal. Getting rid of me would give him a chance to deny everything if he felt like it.’
‘I too think they were Ramón’s men,’ Inez admitted.
‘They sure weren’t locals,’ Singer said and yawned. ‘Listen to that wind. We chose a good spot here.’
There wasn’t much more said as the men dozed off to sleep. Apart from the howl of the wind the encampment was
quiet when Santos arrived back about two hours later. He moved quietly and awakened Paz. ‘We saw three fires,’ he said.
Paz was only half asleep. He could see that Santos was dirty and exhausted. He’d been along the trail and climbed down to the place where he could see back along the valley. It had been a rough journey.
Inez nudged Lucas and he awakened without a sound.
‘You are sure?’ Paz asked.
‘Ten miles south,’ Santos said. ‘I have left Novillo there to keep watch.’
‘Behind us?’ said Paz. That was a surprise. The marks on the trail indicated a group of men travelling ahead of them. ‘Two parties?’
‘Yes,’ said Santos. ‘Two parties.’
Paz said. ‘I’ll go back there now. We must get a compass bearing.’
‘You don’t need a compass bearing,’ Lucas said. ‘They will come up our route, it’s the easiest climb. Ten miles, you say, Santos. They’re probably camped at that place where we came up the outcrop, near the waterfall. You wouldn’t want to try that climb in the failing light. Drinking water and a shelter under the rock face. It would make a decent camp.’
‘Three fires?’
Singer was awake now. He supplied the answer: ‘A sentry along the river in back of them. A few men on the ledge to be sure we didn’t come back and clobber them during the night. Three fires.’
Paz said, ‘We’re on the edge of Pekinista territory.’
Inez said, ‘It’s marked like that on the map. In fact they don’t usually move this far outside the coca and coffee.’
‘And how near is that?’
‘The other side of this range,’ Inez said. ‘As the crow flies fifty miles, but it’s a hundred and fifty miles or more on foot.’
‘You must go back and clobber them,’ said Singer. ‘It’s your only chance.’
‘What with?’ Lucas said. ‘These men are exhausted and hungry.’
Paz turned to Singer and asked, ‘If you were in charge of that party behind us what would you do?’
Singer rubbed his face with his big black hand as he thought about it. ‘I’d be in no hurry. I wouldn’t want to get into a firefight up here and then have to climb back down with my casualties.’ He took the cheroot from his pocket and lit it. No one spoke. Singer finally said, ‘They are probably not there to attack. They probably have a radio and are helping to put another team into place. That’s how it’s done.’