The Assignment

by Per Wahlöö

“Danica Rodríguez.”

  He pondered the name for a moment.

  “Doesn’t mean anything to me,” he said finally.

  Manuel Ortega smiled and looked at the clock.

  “I must be going now, I suppose, Miguel. I can hear the helicopter.”

  “Are you armed?”

  “Yes.”

  “What with?”

  “An army revolver.”

  “Where is it?”

  “In my case.”

  “Wrong place, Manuel, wrong place. Here! Here!”

  He slapped the left side of his chest with the flat of his hand.

  “You’ve always been so dramatic, Miguel. Are you quite certain that you’re not exaggerating the risks?”

  “No! No! I know I’m not exaggerating. They’re mad. They’re out of their minds. They’ll try to kill you, if only for fun, or to be able to say someone else did it.”

  “Who?”

  “Everyone. Anyone. Although no one here or anywhere else in the country thinks about it or even knows about it, they have been at war down there for eighteen months. Hard, bloody, ruthless war. Both sides are in despair, exhausted, finished, but neither will give way an inch. For fifty years those people have been pawns in the chess game of international politics. Now the pawns have gone mad. And still there are people who go on playing with them.”

  Ten minutes later the helicopter rose, humming straight up into the sky, wrapped in its own roaring swirl of air. Through the segmented plexiglass Manuel Ortega saw the white police cars break away and drive off. Only Uribarri remained on the concrete apron. He stood there, his feet apart and two fingers on the brim of his hat, quite still. He swiftly became smaller. Soon he vanished from sight.

  Manuel Ortega wiped the sweat from his brow and looked at the woman sitting beside him with her book open on her knee.

  “What fearful heat,” he said.

  “Wait till we get there,” she said without looking up. “We’ll have much more reason to complain then.”

  “There’s no proper airfield here,” said the pilot, staring downward.

  The country below them was without contours. It looked as if the sun had not only scorched all life out of it but also reshaped the whole of the surface of the earth into a hard rugged crust of stones and soil, yellow-brown flecked with gray.

  “There is in fact nowhere in the whole province where one can land. The army fixed up a landing strip just south of the town for its own small observation planes. But even there it’s very dangerous to try to land a plane.”

  Manuel Ortega yawned. He had slept for a while and had just woken up. The woman at his side appeared calm and composed. She was wearing dark sunglasses and was sitting with her elbow on her knee and her chin supported by her hand. Her fingers were long and thin. She was looking toward the ground.

  “They say it’s because of the heat,” said the pilot. “The asphalt melts, and when they tried using concrete, the blocks swelled up and broke. Strangely enough, the nights can sometimes be very cold.”

  Manuel Ortega blinked and shook his head. But he still could not focus his eyes to get a clear picture of the desolate landscape below.

  “You’ll soon see for yourself. The provincial capital is just behind that ridge. We’ll be there in ten minutes.”

  The helicopter rose a little to climb over the ridge with a comfortable margin. The peculiar sun haze made judging distances hazardous.

  All visual observations must be very uncertain, thought Manuel Ortega.

  He had not even seen the mountain himself until the pilot pointed it out to him. Now they flew over it. He saw ragged, crumbling chunks of stone and scrubby bushes and suddenly a road with carts and a few gray huts. Then the first people, a great number of figures in straw hats and white clothes. They were walking in a long file with bent heads and woven baskets on their shoulders. More figures, a swarm of them, a great open gash and tracks and dark entrances into the mountain. More huts, a smelting works, tall and gray and sooty, and a plume of poisonous purple-yellow smoke which shot out of the tallest chimney and at once spread itself and sank like a membrane toward the ground.

  “The manganese mines,” said the pilot. “If it weren’t for them, the whole damned country could be evacuated and given back to the mob that lived here in the first place. There’s the town, by the way.”

  Manuel Ortega raised his eyes and saw a gray-yellow plain, diffuse and rugged and endless. In the middle of it he could see a group of square boxlike buildings, looking as if someone had happened to drop a collection of white-painted building bricks and then had not bothered to pick them up again. Diagonally down toward the town ran a dead straight gray-white ribbon which must be a highway. When they got nearer he saw that there was some sort of jumble of buildings around the tall white structures, and also a slope with villas and some tentative, dusty grass.

  The helicopter droned in a wide curve around the western outskirts of the town, swept over the roofs of a row of large gray barracks and sank toward the ground.

  The pilot let his machine down slowly and with infinite care, swearing all the time.

  “If the Bolshies want to take this bloody country from us, then they’ll have to use parachute troops. No sane person can land here.”

  “What Bolshies?”

  “Well—the Bolshies,” said the pilot, vaguely. “Down there.”

  He made an indefinite gesture toward the hazy mountains far away in the south.

  “The government in the country you’re alluding to was not Communist,” said Manuel Ortega pedantically. “At the most it was Socialist and democratic. Moreover, it fell, as you perhaps know, three weeks ago and was replaced by a right-wing one.”

  “Thank God for that,” said the pilot.

  At last the helicopter was standing on the ground. The pilot switched off and the shrill whistling of the blades above was heard as the engine gradually turned over more and more slowly. He climbed out of his seat, opened the hatch, and jumped down to the ground, stretching out his hand to the woman. She took it and jumped down lightly. Manuel Ortega noted that she smiled swiftly and automatically as her eyes met the pilot’s. He himself picked up his briefcase and raincoat, put one hand on the pilot’s shoulders, and jumped. His right leg gave way under him and he nearly fell headlong.

  As he looked around he felt the hot, uneven asphalt burn through his thin soles. The heat was unbearable. He was already soaked through with sweat.

  The airfield was very small and surrounded by a double row of barbed-wire fence. The ground was covered with coarse gravel and the buckled asphalt runway was perhaps a hundred and fifty yards long. At the far end of it lay the burnt-out wreck of a small aircraft which had crash-landed.

  “Yes,” said the helicopter pilot. “That was their Piper Cub. Now they’ve got only the Arado left.”

  In one corner of the enclosure was an arched corrugated shed. In front of it stood a gray sedan. It had evidently been waiting for them; before the rotor blades had stopped whistling, the car began to roll across the bumpy field. It stopped, and a tall man in a crumpled striped linen suit got out.

  “My name is Frankenheimer,” he said.

  He put his hand in his pocket and produced his identity card. Manuel Ortega recognized his brother-in-law’s flourishing signature.

  The wail of a siren rose from behind the iron shed, and a white jeep swung onto the field. The man in the linen suit glanced at it and said: “Our car is a good one, though it’s small. I and my colleagues drove down in it. I suggest that you use it while you’re here.” Then he said: “I think so. In fact, yes.”

  The car was French, a CV-2 type Citroën. Manuel had seen some like it in Sweden.

  The jeep braked a few yards away from them, and two police officers in white uniforms climbed out of it. The one who had the most stripes on his sleeve saluted and said: “Lieutenant Brown of the Federal Police at your service. I bid you welcome. Unfortunately neither General Gami nor Colonel Orbal was able to
meet you personally. They have asked us to convey their apologies.”

  “Are you the Chief of Police?”

  “No. Captain Behounek is the Chief of the Federal Police. He could not manage to come either, but he is prepared to meet you later today. I’ve been detailed to take you to your quarters.”

  “We prefer to use our own car. But perhaps you’d be good enough to see to the luggage.”

  “Of course,” said Lieutenant Brown, glancing at the man in the linen suit.

  He looked totally unconcerned.

  “Aren’t you going to come too and have something to eat?” said Danica Rodríguez to the pilot, who was standing close to her and shifting his feet.

  “I’d like to of course, but I must be back at the base before it gets dark. But some other time …”

  After a pause he added: “Anyhow, I’d rather get away from here before civil war breaks out or there’s an earthquake or a volcanic eruption or something.”

  Manuel Ortega looked around with interest as they drove past the barracks. Inside the rusty fence he could see only a very few soldiers. They were half lying in the meager shade below the walls.

  The man in the linen suit turned off the main street and drove in behind a stone wall along a narrow beaten track. To the right was a jumble of small tottering shacks. Most of them were clumsily put together with twine and planks; others consisted of rusty tin plates propped up with posts. Children were swarming about everywhere—dirty, ragged, half-naked, and emaciated. Women with faded strips of cloth wrapped around them were sitting on the ground. They were busy with iron pots and small charcoal fires. Others were walking along the street with water jars on their heads or buckets slung from yokes across their shoulders. Some of them turned their heads and stared at the car with apathetic, animal-like animosity. From the buildings rose a heavy rank stench of decay, sweat, and garbage.

  Frankenheimer found an opening in the wall and swung back onto the main street.

  “Have you ever seen anything like it? Excuse me for saying so, but this really is a lousy town.”

  Danica Rodríguez had not looked around once the whole time. She sat upright in the back of the car staring straight ahead of her.

  They drove into the center of the town, past the monotonous dazzling white blocks of apartments, shopwindows behind locked grids, and a few bars which looked as if they were locked and bolted. Short, withered palm trees grew along the sidewalks. The streets were practically empty.

  “It’s still siesta time,” said the man at the wheel. “And people don’t dare go out either. Anyway, there aren’t many people left here.”

  He drove across the square and stopped outside the Governor’s Palace, which was large and white and looked fairly new, with its wide picture windows and rows of white pillars on the cornices. A policeman in white and a soldier in black flanked the entrance. The jeep was already there and their luggage had been taken out of it. Lieutenant Brown was sitting in the front seat smoking. He did not bother to get out or even turn his head.

  As Manuel Ortega stood on the sidewalk he heard a faint humming noise and, looking up, saw the helicopter like a grotesque insect against the vapid pale-blue sky.

  Pull yourself together, he thought.

  “There goes your airman,” he said jokingly to the woman.

  She gave him a cold, tired look. “Yes,” she said.

  Then she dropped her cigarette butt, stepped on it and walked through the swinging doors behind the soldier who was carrying the luggage.

  Manuel Ortega went into the marble hall. A sudden thought made him stop and look around.

  “Mm,” said Frankenheimer. “This is where it happened. Just here. The lad who did the shooting stood there behind the counter. We’ve said we don’t want any more messengers here. The white chaps will have to put a man in here. I’ve told them about that too, but they haven’t done it yet.”

  He looked tired and sweaty, and he wiped his forehead with a rolled-up handkerchief.

  “Ye-es,” he said. “I’ve told them. I’ve done that.”

  The offices were one floor up, a suite of rooms along the length of a white corridor. Most of them were empty and looked as if they had hardly ever been used. It was almost dark in all but two of them, for the shutters had been closed in order to keep out some of the heat. Nevertheless, the air in them was heavy and dusty and suffocating. A relatively young man in a black sateen jacket and dark glasses was sitting in one of the rooms. He had pulled out the bottom drawer of the desk so that he could put his feet up on it while he read the newspaper. When they opened the door and went in, he looked up, put down the newspaper, and stood up.

  “I’m in charge of the chancery,” he said. “But there isn’t a chancery.”

  “Are you the only official here?”

  “Yes. There were only three of us. The General and I and an ex-lieutenant who was the General’s adjutant and secretary. He left immediately after the General’s death.”

  “Probably given a medical discharge, yes, no doubt,” said Frankenheimer.

  Before they had had time to close the door behind them the young man had once again sat himself down with his feet on the desk drawer and was reading the newspaper.

  At the end of the corridor was the room which Orestes de Larrinaga had used. It was large and light and bare, but at least there was an electric fan on the ceiling.

  Danica Rodríguez stood by the window, smoking. She looked out over the square, and when the draft from the fan lifted her short hair, he saw that the slim nape of her neck was covered with tiny beads of sweat.

  On a chair by the wall a short fat man was sitting with his legs apart and his hands on his knees, doing nothing whatsoever.

  “This is López,” said Frankenheimer. “He and I’ll be on duty together and we’ll always be near at hand. Twelve hours at a stretch from midday to midnight. Then the others change with us. You meet them tonight.”

  Manuel Ortega looked around. There were no files in the room, no books, no papers, nothing except the furniture. He pulled open one of the drawers in the desk. It was empty. He went out to the secretary’s room. Equally empty. A green safe stood there, its door open. It was empty. He went back to the others.

  “If you don’t mind then, we thought we’d do it like this,” said Frankenheimer, and then he fell silent.

  “Like what?”

  “You take this room and the lady sits in the other; don’t you think it should be like that?”

  The woman by the window looked dejectedly at him.

  “One of us will always be in here. Where the other is—well, you needn’t worry about that.”

  “You must have one of us here in the room because there are two doors,” he added gloomily, as if complaining about the plan of the building.

  Manuel began to feel tired and irritable.

  “Hurry up,” he said.

  The man in the linen suit looked sadly at him.

  “Then we’ve got the problem of where you’re to live,” he said.

  He took a couple of long strides out into the corridor, glanced to the left, took out a key, and unlocked the door on the opposite side.

  “Here,” he said. “This way it’s all right. Two rooms, one through the other, bedroom farthest in. There’s a bathroom and shower too. When you’re in in the daytime and in the evenings, then the one on close duty will be in the corridor.”

  “Close duty?”

  “Yes, we call it that. It’s usually called that. I’ll put a chair here—a swivel chair will be fine.”

  He said this very thoughtfully.

  “Couldn’t we get all this over and done with a little quicker? I’m tired and would very much like to have a shower and change.”

  “When you’re asleep or staying permanently in the inner room, then the one on close duty will be in here, in the outer room. Is that all right with you?”

  “What do you mean by permanently in the inner room?”

  Frankenheimer did not answer
the question.

  “Yes—well—that must be about everything,” he said absently. “No, of course not. The girl.”

  He went back to the office. Danica Rodríguez was still standing by the window, smoking, and the fat little man was still sitting in his chair.

  “You can live here too,” said Frankenheimer, picking his nose. “We can fix it.”

  “Thank you.”

  “But if you don’t want to, we’ve arranged for you to have an apartment in town. About three blocks from here. Two rooms.”

  “I’d rather do that.”

  “Yes. It’d be better. Then we’ve got you out of the way.”

  “In any case I’d prefer to have the apartment.”

  “We did it—so to speak—out of solicitude.”

  “Thank you.”

  “We haven’t had any instructions about you. But it wasn’t difficult. There are plenty of apartments. So many people have left lately,” said Frankenheimer, staring at her breasts.

  “Then I’ll go there now, thank you.”

  “And change? Yes.”

  “No. I thought I’d blow the place to bits.”

  Frankenheimer’s expression remained quite unchanged.

  “What shall I do about my luggage?”

  “Tell someone,” said Frankenheimer.

  That man will drive me mad, thought Manuel Ortega.

  The telephone buzzed. Frankenheimer put out his hand and picked up the receiver. He seemed to listen for a moment or two and then put it down again.

  “Who was it?” said Manuel Ortega.

  “Well, it was someone who said he thought you ought to be rubbed out.”

  “In the future I’d prefer to take my calls myself.”

  “In this hole you can trace a call in ten seconds.… If you want to,” he added.

  The telephone buzzed again.

  “Yes. Ortega.”

  “Good. Welcome to the town. This is the Citizens’ Guard executive branch speaking. We want to remind you that you will be dead within two weeks, however many bodyguards you have. As we hope to avoid unnecessary executions, however, we are giving you this opportunity to leave immediately. This you must do by eight o’clock tonight at the latest. This is good advice, and we mean it. Good-by.”