El Presidente came over to the window and stood beside me. “It is never simple.”
I turned to look at him.
“When I was a young man I thought I knew all the answers. Then I came to the palacia and found there is no quick and easy answer for anything. The smallest matters have a way of growing into insurmountable problems. And all the time there are people pushing you. Do this. Do that. First one way, then another, until there are times you wish you could take back the words you once said out of ignorance. No man ever knows anything until he is in the lonely and precarious seat of power and realizes how little he actually knows.”
“I will speak to Campion when I get to New York. Perhaps he will know a way to keep the guns from getting onto his ships.”
“Do that,” the old man said, “but it will not help. How can Campion personally approve every freight order his ships pick up? He would have to look into every hold, every crate. And if he did that how long do you think he would remain in business?”
“I shall speak to him anyway.”
“I am beginning to think there is only one way to settle this. It is for me to lead an army into the mountains and clean out the cursed bandoleros once and for always. Kill every one of them.”
“That is not the answer,” I said. “You would have to kill the women and children, too, and you couldn’t do that. Even if it were the only way, the world would turn away from us in horror.”
“I know. The Americans would denounce us as a dictatorship and the Soviets would claim we were an extension of American imperialism.”
El Presidente took a deep breath. “It’s not easy. I sit here with my hands tied while every day a few more are murdered or subverted. And the only thing I can do is defend, never attack. It is a war without answer.”
“The amnesty—”
He stared at me. “The amnesty is a failure! Has one single bandolero or revolutionary come forward? No, and they never will. You might as well accept it.”
“It has been in effect only two weeks,” I said. “They are still deliberating.”
El Presidente walked away from me back to his desk. His voice was dry. “If you wish to continue to delude yourself, you can. I prefer to be realistic.” He sat down heavily in his chair. “Take that little worm you allowed to escape with his life. Have you heard one word from him since? Or from his brother, that cowardly traitor? Or for that matter from the girl?”
I didn’t answer. I couldn’t tell el Presidente that I wouldn’t even have known about the guns if it had not been for Beatriz. To me that was proof that the amnesty would at least be discussed and evaluated. I stopped in front of his desk. “You are not withdrawing your offer?”
“I don’t have to,” el Presidente replied contemptuously. “There is no need to withdraw a public offer that privately you know will never be accepted. At least this way the failure will be on their heads.”
Then he changed the subject abruptly. “The girl? What are you planning to do about her?”
“I don’t know. I hadn’t thought about it.”
“Better think about it, then. I have a feeling that somehow you’ve changed since you met her.”
“What do you mean?”
“You have been in Corteguay for almost a month,” he said, the hint of a smile at the corners of his mouth, “and there hasn’t been the slightest hint of scandal. Not one father or husband has come forth with a complaint!”
As usual the drapes were drawn when I entered the room. “Amparo, I’m leaving tomorrow. I’ve come to say good-bye.”
She looked up from the desk. Her voice sounded eerie, as if it were coming from a great distance. “That’s very kind of you. You really didn’t have to bother.”
“I wanted to,” I said, walking over to her. “I was wondering if there is anything I can do for you.”
“For me?” There was an echo of surprise in her voice. “Why should you want to do anything for me?”
“For many reasons, most of which you know. But mainly because I don’t like to see you like this.”
Amparo looked straight into my eyes. Her own were calm and distant, as if we were speaking about some other person. “You mean the drugs?”
“Yes. There are places where you could be helped, you know. Cured.”
“What would you cure me of, Dax? Of the only peace I’ve ever known?”
“But it’s not real peace, Amparo, even you know that. It’s only an illusion.”
Again Amparo looked at me with that strange calmness. “Would you have me go back to what I was before? Torturing myself, living in terror, half crazy all the time with wanting things I knew I could never have? No, thank you. I don’t care if it is only an illusion. Let me keep it, Dax.”
“But you’re only half alive.”
“Half alive is better than dead.” She looked down at the desk in front of her and picked up a letter. “Look at this, Dax. Do you know what I have been doing?”
I shook my head.
“I’ve been trying to write a letter of condolence. For two days I’ve been trying to write the family of my cousin to explain to them how sorry I am that he had to die because of my father’s ambitions.”
Amparo’s voice was beginning to take on a slight edge of hysteria. “Do you know how many times I have had to write to families of men my father has killed? I can’t even count them any more, there are so many.”
“It was an accident,” I said, “your father was not to blame.”
“It was no accident. The only accident was that somehow you found out something you were not meant to know. From that moment on my cousin was doomed. Last night I went to his house. Already his widow is in black, and his children are wide-eyed, not really understanding that their father has left them forever. I could not walk into that house knowing what I knew. So I came home, and ever since then I’ve been trying to write this letter.”
Angrily Amparo crumpled the paper and threw it into the wastebasket. She reached for a cigarette and lit it with trembling fingers. After a few moments the trembling stopped, and she looked at me again. When she spoke, her voice was icily detached.
“How can you be so stupid, Dax? All the answers you seek are in your own hands. Kill him, Dax, and all this will stop. I am beginning to think that even he is waiting for you to do it. He would welcome it.”
That evening I stood in the doorway of Beatriz’s house as her servant told me that she and her uncle had gone away. No, she did not know where they had gone.
It was not until the next morning, when I went to el Presidente’s office to say good-bye, that he informed me that the two of them had left on yesterday’s Miami plane.
177
“This visit is strictly unofficial,” Jeremy warned as we got out of the car. “If anyone asks, the senator will deny he ever spoke to you.”
“I understand,” I said. “I’m grateful that someone is at least willing to talk to me.” And I meant it. Despite what George Baldwin had thought, there had been no official response from Washington.
I’d taken it for three weeks. Then the pressure began to build up inside me. The news from home hadn’t been good. A village in the mountains had been completely taken over by the bandoleros. It had taken almost half an army division to drive them out, and when they did go they left nothing behind them. Every one of the inhabitants was dead. Fifty-seven persons—men, women, and children.
It was too big for even el Presidente to withhold from the newspapers, and they were filled with it. And no matter how objective they tried to make the story, it came out sounding as if the government were responsible and the bandoleros were some romantic figures out of America’s highly distorted western past. The Communist and many European papers were far more blunt. They blatantly accused el Presidente of wiping out the village as an act of reprisal against a popular revolt. Several members of the Communist bloc even threatened to bring up the matter before the United Nations.
They didn’t, of course, but all the talk and t
he threats did us no good. It became fashionable in America to regard el Presidente as another Perón, Batista, or Trujillo, and the American politician, ever sensitive to the moods of his constituents, was perfectly willing to sit on his hands as far as we were concerned.
It wasn’t until I received a coded dispatch from el Presidente that I decided to see if I could force the issue. The bandoleros, actually, had held the army at bay for almost three days with mortar and cannon fire, and our losses were heavier than reported. Now it seemed likely that the enemy would simply move into another village and the same thing would happen all over again. If it did, it was not at all certain our army could dislodge them.
For once I was willing to accept what the old man said without question. I had seen the wanton destruction at Martínez’s farm. I picked up the telephone and called Jeremy in Washington and read him el Presidente’s letter.
There was a silence on the wire after I had finished. After a moment he asked, “Have you shown this to anyone in our government?”
“Who is there to show it to?” I asked. “We stand already condemned in their eyes. Baldwin must have sent in a report, and yet I have heard from no one.”
When Jeremy spoke his voice was casual. “Do you remember the old house up on the Cape?”
“Of course.” It was the first summer I had been in the United States and I had spent a weekend there. “I didn’t know you still had it.”
“It’s still in the family. I go up there every now and then when I can get away. I was planning to go this weekend. If you think you could stand the quiet, would you like to join me?”
“Very much.” Jeremy had something on his mind or he wouldn’t have asked me.
“Good. I’ll pick you up at your office. Maybe we’ll drive up.”
“We’ll do better than that, we’ll fly up.”
“I didn’t know you had a plane.”
“You haven’t been reading your own newspapers,” I said dryly. “Sue Ann has been very generous in her settlement.”
Jeremy hadn’t told me we were going to meet the senator until we got there. The Cape was usually fairly deserted at this time of the year, and the senator himself opened the door. He was dressed casually in a sweater, slacks, and sneakers. He seemed even younger than his thirty-five years.
“Hello,” he said, holding out his hand, “I’ve been wanting to meet you for a long time. I never had the chance to thank you for what you did for my brother.”
I glanced at Jeremy and saw the lines in his face tighten slightly. In some strange way he still blamed himself for the death of his brother. He felt it was somehow his fault, that he should have taken more precautions than he had. I didn’t see where or how.
“I did what I could,” I said.
We followed the senator into a small study. The house was silent. There didn’t seem to be anyone else around.
“Care for a drink?”
“Not for me, thanks,” I said.
He mixed a Scotch and water for Jeremy and himself and sat down opposite me. “Jeremy has already told you that this visit is entirely off the record. I don’t know what I can do to help you, probably nothing. But I would like to hear you out just as a friend.”
Again I glanced at Jeremy. “Tell him everything,” he said.
I did just that. From the very beginning. I left nothing out. I began with a brief history of Corteguay and told him what it had been like before el Presidente came down from the mountains and took over. Then I told him what had happened in Corteguay since then. He listened quietly, intently, interrupting only to ask a clarifying question, and when the story was over almost two hours had passed.
“I’m afraid I’ve been rather long-winded.”
“Not at all,” the senator said. “I’ve been most interested.”
“I’ll take that drink now.”
He got up and mixed drinks for us all. Then he turned back to me. “You say there have always been bandoleros but that now they are being supported by the Communists. You’re sure of that, are you? Everyone who comes to us for help says that.”
“I saw the guns myself,” I said. “I held them in my hand. They were made in the old Von Kuppen factory in East Germany.”
The senator nodded slowly. “I’ve heard some talk about that. Supposedly they’re making only agricultural machinery.” He reached for a cigarette, then discarded it for a cigar. He put it into his mouth without lighting it. “Your president is far from perfect, you know. He was pretty much of a bandit himself.”
“What president is perfect?” I asked. “As sincere and honest as your own is, you must admit that the best that can be said for him is that he was a good general.”
A faint hint of a smile crinkled the senator’s eyes. I could see that he liked what I had said even if he didn’t comment. He held a match to his cigar.
“This much I can say,” I added. “At least when el Presidente came down from the mountains he represented only the people of Corteguay. He had no foreign support, not even America’s. You had been too involved with the previous government to give him any comfort. What he did he did himself, with the aid of only Corteguayans.”
“Do you think he represents the will of the majority of your people today?” the senator asked suddenly.
I looked at him for a moment before I answered. “I don’t know. And I seriously doubt that any of my countrymen can tell you. He has promised an election so the people can decide, but an election with only one candidate would be a farce. And up to now no other candidate has presented himself.”
“Have you ever heard of a man named Guayanos?” the senator asked shrewdly.
“I know about Dr. Guayanos, though I don’t know him personally.” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Jeremy glance at me, and I smiled. “I do know his daughter, however.”
“I haven’t met Dr. Guayanos or his daughter,” the senator said seriously, “but there are several of my fellow congressmen who seem to believe what he told them. That the offer of an amnesty and an election is merely a trick to entice him back into the country where he would promptly be arrested or murdered.”
For the first time I almost lost my temper. “Fifty-seven men, women, and children died in a small village in my country less than two weeks ago. Perhaps the bandoleros killed them, perhaps the soldiers, which largely depends on what newspaper you read. But to me it doesn’t matter who killed them. What is important is that they are dead, and the men responsible for their deaths are those who support the bandoleros with guns and money. The soldiers were not sent to attack a village of women and children. They were sent to free them from the bandoleros. For far too long my country has been governed by men who seized power through bloodshed. If Dr. Guayanos is as concerned as he professes, let him come forward and run for the presidency. The world will soon discover whether it is a trick or not. But I am afraid that in his own way Guayanos is no better than the others. It is much safer to seize power than to risk refusal by the electorate.”
“Or his life,” the senator said.
I stared at him. “Especially his life. Is his any more precious than any other?”
The senator looked at me thoughtfully for a moment. When he spoke his voice was gentle. “The world is filled with cowards who ask that heroes die for them.”
A few minutes passed and I got to my feet. “I apologize for taking more of your time than I intended. Thank you for letting me.”
“No, it is I who should thank you,” the senator said, getting up out of his chair. “I have learned a great deal. But as I said, I don’t know what I can do.”
“You’ve listened, and that means a great deal. It’s more than anyone else in your government has been willing to do.”
We began to walk to the door. “I would like to see you again,” the senator said. “Socially, so that we may become friends.”
“I would like that.”
“Would you accept a dinner invitation from my sister if you should get one?”
“
It would be a pleasure.”
“Good.” The senator grinned and for a moment he looked like a triumphant little boy. “She would have killed me had you refused. She’s been dying to meet you.”
178
It was the Monday night after I returned from the Cape. Jeremy had gone back to Washington, where his news bureau had headquartered him, and I had spent a long frustrating day attending minor UN committee meetings. It was after eleven when I looked up from my desk in the consulate. I felt restless and knew I would not sleep. Suddenly I realized that I had not eaten dinner.
John Perona himself lifted the velvet rope at El Morocco to let me through the crowd. He groaned when he saw me.
I smiled at him. “You don’t seem happy.”
“Who could be happy in a place like this?” He looked out over the crowded rooms. “Problems, nothing but problems. I just finished telling my son that I hoped you wouldn’t show up tonight, and here you are.”
I grinned at him. “Why me especially?”
A reluctant smile came to his lips. “Every one of your ex-wives is here, plus three or four of your old girlfriends.”
I laughed. “Would you rather I told them to go somewhere else?”
He stared at me for a moment, not knowing if I were joking. Then he shook his head. “No, only tonight. It seems as if everyone in New York is here. Maybe in the whole world.”
I followed him as he threaded his way through the tables to an empty banquette against the wall. He wasn’t entirely wrong. Aly Khan and a party were at one table. Amos Abidijan, Marcel’s former father-in-law, was at another. Aristotle and Tina Onassis were at their usual spot with Rubi and his new young French wife. The motion-picture colony was represented by Sam Spiegel and Darryl Zanuck, at separate tables, and at another the prominent international attorney Paul Gitlin held forth on his two favorite subjects, his weight and such important literary matters as royalty rates and motion-picture sales. His patient wife, Zelda, listened and waited her chance to get a word in sidewise.
Harold Robbins Thriller Collection Page 160