by Morris West
So, he began, da capo, the exercise of the questionnaire. Name? Erwin Hengst. Nationality? West German. Age? 55. Place of Birth? Frankfurt-am-Main. Profession? Consulting Engineer. What sort of Engineering? Mining. Purpose of visit to Argentina? Tourism. Address in Argentina? Plaza Hotel, Buenos Aires. Languages? German, Spanish, Italian. He must speak no English at all, except in the company of his colleagues. Points of Reference? He should register immediately with the German Consul-General. Any contact with the Spada office must be made, in secret, with Herman Vigo. For secrecy he could use the Kunz apartment. Money? He had twenty thousand Deutschmarks to declare. Herman Vigo would supply all his other funds. Habits? He must give up bourbon and drink wine, beer or Scotch whisky. He must ask for German newspapers, buy a couple of German novels and a German language guide-book to Argentina. Father’s name? Franz Erwin Hengst. Father’s profession? School teacher. Mother’s maiden name? Ludmilla Dürer…
The rehearsal and the cocktail service carried him through the first short leg to Zürich. During the long night haul from Zürich to Monrovia to Rio he ate and drank and slept fitfully, haunted always by the threshold fear that he might start talking in his sleep. In the transit lounge at Rio he shaved, changed his shirt and underthings, and composed himself to enjoy the last four hours’ run to Montevideo and Buenos Aires.
There was only one moment of tension, while the blank-faced official at the immigration desk studied his passport and searched laboriously in his file of undesirables. Finally, he closed the passport with a snap and handed it back. Two paces more and John Spada, alias Erwin Hengst, stepped on to the killing ground.
‘We have a plan,’ said the Scarecrow Man.
‘I don’t like it.’ said Major Henson.
‘But you have not come up with anything better,’ said Sancho. ‘You exaggerate the risks because you think like a British soldier, not like a guerrillero!’
‘Time is against us,’ said the elder Vallenilla. ‘The news is that my son is very sick. He dies a little every day.’
They were seated on the patio of the farmhouse, sipping iced beer and looking out across the serried ranks of orange trees that marched across the flatlands to the river’s edge. They were frayed and tense, all except the Scarecrow Man who still preserved his air of sardonic detachment. Spada said calmly:
‘Let’s take the good news first. There’s a vessel on her way down from Caracas. When we break the boys out, she’ll take us aboard and head home.’
‘She’ll take your man home,’ said Sancho. ‘Chavez stays here with us. We need him.’
‘Finel’ said Spada amiably. ‘Now, what’s the plan for the break-out?’
‘It’s not a break-out.’ Sancho was obviously eager to justify himself. ‘It’s a hand-over . . . Let me explain. When the security boys have finished with a subject, they either kill him or put him in detention in case they need him again. If and when they want him, they send an order to the prison commandant, who hands over the prisoner. Clear?’
‘So far.’
‘The order is on an official form signed by a senior officer of security, normally the chief interrogator, Major O’Higgins.’
‘That’s the bastard who committed my daughter.’ Spada was eager. ‘I want him crucified!’
‘One thing at a time,’ said the Scarecrow Man. ‘We are all involved in this. Go on, Sancho.’
‘So we have to procure both the form and the signature,’ Sancho continued. ‘Next, our people have to present themselves at the prison, pick up the bodies and sign a receipt.’
‘Can we get the official forms?’
‘Yes,’ said Sancho with a grin. ‘There’s a girl who works at headquarters – ugly as sin, but I keep her from getting lonely.’
‘The signature?’
‘Same girl, same reason. We can make a passable forgery.’
‘So, where’s the catch?’
‘The catch,’ said Major Henson, ‘is in the routine of the prison itself. Sancho here knows it, because he’s been inside and worked as an orderly in the office. Normally the security boys telephone first. They say they want prisoner X and they’re sending down a detachment, with a written order to collect him.’
‘Can’t we do that?’
‘Sure,’ said Henson. ‘But suppose the real security boys call and someone mentions the first order. We walk ourselves into a trap.’
‘I covered that,’ said Sancho irritably. ‘We telephone and then cut the line.’
‘But Martín Garcia still has an Army radio link. We can’t cut that.’
‘But they work regular schedules. We can find out what they are.’
‘If the telephone is out, they’ll work outside the schedule. It’s a hell of a risk.’
‘How can we avoid it?’ asked Spada. ‘Or at least minimise it?’
‘Martín Garcia is an island,’ said Henson. ‘The prison has its own ferry link to the mainland. If we can have the prisoners delivered to the mainland, then at least we’ve got a line of retreat if anything goes wrong. The other way we’re trapped on the island itself.’
‘Sancho?’
‘In theory, it’s possible. In fact, it’s a break in routine. That’s already suspicious. The duty officer at the prison might check back to security for confirmation.’
‘What sort of traffic is there between the prison and the mainland?’
‘Quite a lot. Supplies going in. Prison personnel coming out on leave. The Commandant comes up to town regularly.’
‘Have we got any sort of a time-table for these things?’
‘We’re preparing one.’ Sancho was defensive. ‘Remember we didn’t get clearance on you until a few days ago. These things take time.’
Major Henson shrugged, as if to say ‘You see what I mean? How can you run an operation like that?’ The Scarecrow Man spoke for the first time.
‘I see the Major’s point. I see Sancho’s also. Let’s consider it from the point of view of the security men themselves. They have their own emergencies. They’re interrogating a man, and suddenly – boom! – they want to cross-check with a previous subject. They telephone the prison. They want quick action. Get the prisoner to the mainland. We’ll pick him up on the run. It’s possible, isn’t it?’
‘Possible,’ said Sancho sharply. ‘But not probable. These people work in their own closed circuit. Why should they hurry when they’ve got their victims on ice? I’ve been there, remember?’
‘So,’ said the Scarecrow Man placidly, ‘they don’t have emergencies. We could always create one for them, couldn’t we?’
‘We could.’ Sancho was immediately wary. ‘Provided you don’t put too much heat on my people. You go away; but we have to live here. Remember that – remember it always!’
‘Sancho is right,’ said the elder Vallenilla. ‘The last thing we want is a new wave of repression. However, our friend Lunarcharsky has at least produced a new idea, which we must consider carefully. Now, may I please say something? . . . We get news from the prison. It is garbled and fragmentary. Sometimes it is deliberately falsified. But all that we hear points to the fact that Rodo is being treated in a particularly brutal fashion – as if they wanted to make an example by debasing an intellectual. He was badly damaged by the torture. Now it would seem . . .’
They had finished with him long ago, in the Fun Palace. They had scooped him out like an orange, pulp and pips and fibre, until there was nothing left but a hollow yellow husk. They had been careful to see that he missed nothing in the catalogue of cruelties: the parrot’s perch, the electric shocks, the near-drowning in a tank of sewage, the beatings, the days and nights in the kennel, where he must squat on a bed of sharp stones, unable to stand or lie down, the evulsion of toe-nails, the weights that stretched him as he hung by his wrists from the ceiling.
Many times he had been only a heart-beat from dying; but always they had denied him the last merciful exit into darkness. When he had begged them to let him go, to toss him into the river like the hund
reds of others, dead and near dead, they had laughed. Never, they said. Martín Garcia needed a clown to brighten the prison days, a mascot to grace the parade of the damned. So, now, while the other inmates shuffled round the exercise yard, they chained him, like a dog, to one of the execution posts; so that he could only sit or crawl in a two-metre circle, to exercise his atrophying muscles and his calcifying joints.
Sometimes, one of the guards would stop and pat him, half in pity, half in contempt. Every day without fail, Colonel Ildefonso Juarez would come limping towards him, lift his head with the crook of his cane and mock him:
‘So! How is the great Rodolfo Vallenilla today? Still working, I hope. You mustn’t disappoint your public. They expect great things from you; testimonies for our difficult times! But of course, I’d forgotten. It’s a book you’re writing, isn’t it? Have you found a title yet? How about “The Book of Revelations”? Or “The Confessions of Rodolfo Vallenilla”, with selected photographs? Nothing yet? Well, never mind! There’s plenty of time – years and years! . . .’
Then he would slap him, with the cane, playfully but painfully, on his skinny rump, and hobble away; while Rodolfo Vallenilla sat, bowed and shrunken, against the post where others, more fortunate, had been shot.
The Colonel thought himself a comedian; but he had missed the point of the comedy; because Rodolfo Vallenilla was indeed writing – not on paper, because he had none, because his fingers were crooked beyond repair, because, even had there been a light in his cell, his sight was beginning to fail – but in his head. He was writing a litany which he recited over and over, in a tuneless monotone; a litany of the living and of the dead, who like himself had been snatched out of human ken, erased from the record as if they had never existed. Each day, each week, he added to it: names whispered in the parade-ground, shouted by the guards, scrawled among the graffiti in the shower-block. One day – were it only Judgment Day! – he would chant the litany aloud and exact for every name a darker damnation on the tyrants.
He dreamed other works too; a vast, visionary epic of the land that had absorbed so many strains of mankind; folk-lore celebrated in Lunfardo, a garland of love-lyrics for Teresa. But these he could not hold long in his head. They came, they went. Only the scraps remained, like tatters of cloth clinging to a thorn bush on the pampas . . . Sometimes the rag on the thorn bush was himself, dusty, wind-blown, pierced with a miscellany of pains, alone, so terribly alone . . .
And yet – he had learned to count blessings too! – he was not always alone. When exercise time was over, the guard would unlock his shackles, and two of the prisoners would hoist him to his feet, put his arms around their shoulders and half-walk, half-drag him back to the cell-block. One was Ferrer, who had been a country priest and had protested the brutalities of a local landlord in Sunday sermons. The other was Chavez, one-time schoolteacher, old-line activist, who had survived a hundred police raids and led a score of bomb operations, and had finally been arrested for singing bawdy protest songs while half-drunk in a bar. They managed to walk him slowly enough to pass on whispered news, and perhaps press into his hand a sticky sweetmeat or a scrap of fruit. Even their touch and their nearness made him want to weep with gratitude. On Saturdays, old Corporal Pascarelli took over the rounds of the cell-block, while his juniors drank late in the canteen. He was always good for two minutes of talk and some tiny gift – a vitamin pill or a cigarette. More rarely, when there was blood in his sputum, and they permitted him to visit the infirmary, the junior aide, a pale melancholy fellow, would massage his back and try to relieve the pain of his distorted spine. For all his effeminate manners he had much courage and he would face down the prison physician, Doctor Wolfschmidt, whose only preoccupations seemed to be the bottle and the torture-rooms.
Yes, even in hell there were mercies, pitifully small, yet large enough to hold a man sane, and nourish the lone guttering taper of hope. But hope for what? Ferrer, robust and Spartan in the ancient faith, urged constantly:
‘Christ is with you, Rodolfo. The worse it gets, the more you are like Him. Believe Him. Hold to Him. He will never abandon you.’
Chavez put it in other words, no less heartening:
‘Hang on to your skull, man! Everything’s in there. Shut your eyes, shut your mouth. Close your ears. Curl up inside your skull and forget ’em. It works. Believe me, it works!’
Old Pascarelli grunted and broke wind and scratched his armpits and talked like a gangster out of the side of his mouth:
‘The big boys, they’re all scared. They want to kill you, like they killed all the others; but they’re scared they may have to produce you one day. Don’t try to fight ’em; they’ll only hurt you more. Just look stupid, punchdrunk, and they’ll leave you alone. That’s the good word. Look stupid. Act dumb!’
So, for want of better remedies he tried them all. He, who had not been to a church since confirmation day, tried to pray. He, the communicator, nursed his visions – or were they his madness? – in solitude. He, the defiant, bobbed and shambled and grinned like a tame ape before his tormentors . . .
When the others had gone their separate ways back to the city. John Spada stayed on to dine and talk family matters with the elder Vallenilla. It was the first time that they had ever been truly private together – the first time Spada had ever been invited to use his host’s given name, Francisco.
‘Strange, isn’t it,’ Spada commented. ‘Our children have married, yet you and I hardly know each other.’
‘Stranger still,’ said Francisco Vallenilla. ‘My son is a prisoner in my country; and you, the foreigner, come to rescue him. It makes me feel inadequate and ashamed.’
‘It shouldn’t. The rest of your family are here, still hostages to the system.’
‘Which I, myself, helped to create – if not by cooperation, at least by political indifference. So long as I was free to do what I wanted – and, believe me, John, I do breed the best blood-stock in the country – I was happy. I also had an easy absolution. I was the man with one talent. I was doing no harm – even a certain amount of good. I thought, I truly believed, my son made unnecessary disturbance about matters which would right themselves in time.’
‘We’ve all fallen into the same trap,’ said John Spada soberly. ‘We’ve all made deals with the Devil, because he’s a very prompt paymaster. Polite too – until you cross him.’
‘Tell me honestly, John, what do you think of our chances?’
‘As of now, fifty-fifty.’
‘Can we better the odds?’
‘With more accurate information, yes. Beyond that, it’s dangerous to speculate. It can be demoralising. We have to make rational judgments on the basis of hard intelligence . . . There is a problem though. Assume we’re successful, what happens to you and your family?’
‘Not too much, I think. We’ll be questioned, of course; harassed probably. But, in the end, they’ll leave us alone. We’re country folk. The security boys are not at home on the pampas. They’re rat-catchers, trained for the city sewers . . . I think, in the end, you will be in more danger than I.’
‘Please God, I’ll be far away – back in New York with Rodo.’
‘We live in the age of the assassins,’ said Francisco Vallenilla. ‘If Rodo lives to write again, and you are known as the man who beat the system here, you will both be targets.’
‘One thing at a time,’ said John Spada. ‘One day at a time.’
‘They may try to expropriate your business here.’
‘They’d be fools to try. Their bankers would go sour overnight. Besides, it’s now public news that I’ve retired. Spada Consolidated is a public corporation with a lot of powerful shareholders. The rules of the game dictate that men are mortal, but giant corporations are sacred to eternity.’
Francisco Vallenilla poured more wine.
‘Do you think, John, there will be violence in this affair?’
‘We’ll try to avoid it, of course; but, yes, it’s possible.’
‘I
want to come with you on the operation.’
‘No!’ Spada was emphatic. ‘You stay away. You could compromise too many people. You could, in the end, be forced to pay tribute to the ERP.’
‘I see that, but…’
‘But sink your pride and stay away. Which reminds me, I need a good hand-gun.’
‘I’ll get you one,’ said Francisco Vallenilla. ‘But for God’s sake, don’t keep it on your person or in the hotel. A lot of the staff are in the pay of security.’
‘I’ll keep it in the Kunz apartment.’
‘Would you be prepared to kill a man?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then I ask you – no, I beg you! – if anything goes wrong, if there is danger that Rodo will be taken again – kill him!’
‘Mother of God!’ John Spada swore softly. ‘What kind of a man do you think I am?’
Colonel Ildefonso Juarez was a very methodical man; which was not the least of his qualifications as Commandant of a prison island. His records were beautifully kept – except where the security people dictated that no records should be kept at all. His accounts always balanced; which meant that peculation of prison funds was kept always at an acceptable figure. His reports were spare and illuminating: accidents and casualties nil, infectious disease minimal, escapes nil, major disciplinary infractions nil, prisoners’ complaints nil, staff problems nil.
His office was a model of neatness, not a paper out of place, no trace of dust on the files, the pencils freshly sharpened each day, the waste-basket emptied at noon and at the close of each day’s business. His shoes shone like glass; his hair was trimmed twice a week by the prison barber who also shaved him before each morning’s rounds. To his superiors he showed a military respect; to his inferiors a peremptory tyranny, lightened at times by a sardonic humour which never failed to elicit an appreciative chuckle from the troops.