by Robert Moss
Lampiao was the most notorious bandit in Brazil. At the mention of his name, a picture flitted through Harry’s mind, something he had seen in a Rio newspaper: a blurred daguerreotype of a man in funny pebble glasses, dressed all in leather, with crossed bandoliers over his chest and a rifle in his fist. The wide brim of his hat, studded with silver coins or amulets, was turned up at the front, lending him an oddly Napoleonic aspect. The toe of his boot rested on the corpse of a fallen enemy. Lampião had been credited with killing hundreds of men. He had earned his strange-sounding nickname by squeezing off rounds from his Winchester so fast (it was said) that the rifle barrel glowed like a street lamp.
“I don’t understand this at all,” Harry said. “Lampião is no Robin Hood, and he’s certainly no revolutionary. His men tried to attack the Prestes Column when it marched through the north eight years ago.”
“That’s what Tatu said to Emil,” Johnny responded. “But Emil is convinced that the bandits — the cangaceiros — are our natural allies. In his head he’s still in China. The bandits made up about half of Mao’s forces. You see, revolutionaries are always trying to fight the last revolution. Just as generals are forever trying to fight the last war.”
“But why did Emil pick you to send to Lampião?”
“He asked what I thought of the plan, and I said it was inspired. You know that’s the game I’ve been playing, Harry. Egging them on. You didn’t find fault with it before now, did you?”
“No,” Maitland agreed. He had discussed all of this in general terms with Colin Bailey. The spymaster’s instinct was the same as Johnny’s: that the agent’s role should not be merely to pass on information but to act as agent provocateur, goading or luring the conspirators into overreaching themselves.
“But I don’t like the smell of this,” Harry went on. “By all accounts, Lampião isn’t the most hospitable host to uninvited guests. Has it occurred to you that Emil may be trying to get you killed?”
“It’s occurred to me,” Johnny agreed. “But I’ll manage. Tatu is coming too. He doesn’t like the idea any better than I do, so I think I can trust him. And he knows the lie of the land.”
“But how does Emil propose to win over Lampião?”
“With money. He’s got lots of it.”
“Where is it coming from?”
“I brought ten thousand U.S. Emil arrived with fifty thousand more. I’ve heard that a man from the OMS flew in to Sao Paulo this week with still more. And there are local contributors.”
“Who?”
“Businessmen paying protection money, out-of-work politicos hoping to get their jobs back — I can’t tell you for sure. But I ran into something interesting the day after I last saw you. I was running a little seminar on anti-military techniques, specifically aimed at sergeants. You know the kind of pitch. Why are your officers treated better than you? Why can’t you pay for a decent house for your family, or your mistress at least? The usual stuff. I had a minor brainwave. The people I’m working with aren’t long on theory. Most of them are functional illiterates. Pictures work better than any number of speeches. It struck me that it might be very effective to hand out photographs showing the rich at play — mansions with sixteen gardeners and three swimming pools, that sort of thing — so the sergeants can take a good look at how the top dogs live. I got a camera for one of our boys and told him to go around the city taking pictures. He came back with a good selection. Well, Nilo happened to drop in when we were discussing which photographs to use. He loved the whole idea. Of course, he comes from a wealthy family himself. He was keen to see which of his family friends were going to have their villas expropriated. He looked through the pictures and started laughing as if his sides would split. Then all the wind went out of his sails.”
“What happened?”
“He didn’t like one of the photographs. In fact, he pulled it out of the batch and put it in his wallet. He said it wasn’t appropriate. He wouldn’t give any further explanation.”
“Can you describe the house in the picture?”
“I can do better than that. I got the negative from Escoteiro. I didn’t have time to have it developed.”
He took an envelope from his pocket and handed it to Harry, who extracted the negative and held it up to the light.
Even with the image reversed, Maitland recognized the high walls, the wrought-iron gates, the ornamental pond among the shade trees.
He was looking at the house of Doctor Alcibiades, snake collector, mayor of Rio — and the man in charge of the police.
Why would Nilo seek to protect Alcibiades? It was not inconceivable that the doctor had a hold over Nilo; given the millionaire Communist’s sexual proclivities, he may well have had occasion to consult a venerealogist. The alternative explanation was that the doctor was in on the plot. Perhaps he was even one of the anonymous local paymasters. That possibility was unsettling. If the man who controlled the capital was part of the conspiracy, then its chances of success were far greater than the British — or Johnny — had anticipated.
3
Johnny dined with Helene at Gladstone’s, a lively bistro just off the Avenida Atlantica. The little marble tables were jammed tight together, but they had no trouble finding a quiet nook at this hour of the evening; Gladstone’s crowded up after midnight and stayed open until its last patrons left for work — or their beds.
“What did you do today?” Johnny asked casually.
“I was typing reports for Emil all morning,” she said, lighting a slim black cigarillo. “Then I met Proust.”
“Who the hell is Proust?”
“Your radio man, of course! You mean you don’t know about him?”
“Are you talking about Harvey?” Johnny had been informed on his return to Rio that a wireless specialist, a Californian called Harvey Prince, would accompany him on the first leg of his trip to the north. As far as Johnny could make out, the job of the radio man was to set up a communications link between Emil’s general staff and the local command in Recife.
“I’ve decided to call him Proust,” Helene said mischievously. “I think he’s one of the boys. You’d better watch your back, dearest. He’s awfully pretty.”
She glanced at the menu.
“Then I had to fix Emil’s toilet,” she went on. “Honestly, the man is as helpless as a child. The bowl overflowed, and when I went back, the filth was seeping out over the living room floor. So I struck my blow for the cause with a plumber’s devil. Then I made some deliveries. Then I went home and lay in the bath until the hot water stopped running. Quite a heroic day, wouldn’t you say?”
She yawned ostentatiously.
“Oh, but I mustn’t forget,” she added. “We have a new lodger at the Valhalla. And I have a new admirer. He’s asked me to go to the new Ginger Rogers movie with him. You don’t object, do you, brother dear?”
“Who is he?” Johnny asked suspiciously.
“His name is Hossbach. Our landlady and everyone else calls him Engineer Hossbach. I don’t know whether he has a first name.”
“German?”
“As Bavarian as a beerhall.”
“What’s he doing in Rio?”
“That’s the best part, Johnny. Can you imagine a pig looking devious? That is the picture of Hossbach, when I asked. He muttered something about a contract with one of the government departments. But you must ask him yourself. He says he’s very anxious to meet you.”
Johnny resolved to take a look at the new lodger before he left for the north. But on their return to the boarding house he was told that Engineer Hossbach had not yet come back from dinner. Johnny fell asleep with a Portuguese dictionary in one hand and a copy of Os Sertões, Euclides da Cunha’s haunting account of millenarian revolt in the backlands of the north, open across his chest. His dreams were filled with ragged bands of flagellants fired with a vision of an imminent Kingdom of God. He was wakened by Helene banging on the thin wall between their rooms. He responded by pounding with the heel of his s
hoe.
“You’re lying on your back!” she called out to him. “Roll over before your snoring wakes up the whole of Copacabana!”
“Is that any way to talk to your brother?”
It was strange how such banal, domestic intimacies could still forge a bond between them, as the thinnest fibres, wound tightly together, make the strongest rope. For a moment, lying wide awake on his lumpy mattress, he considered going to her, sharing her bed for a few hours.
Instead, he pulled out an old pipe and filled it with his favourite navy cut tobacco. Then he put on his bush jacket, khaki pants and a pair of light boots and hiked along the beach, wondering which was more real — the images from da Cunha that had taken life in his dreams or the abstract dreams of Emil, for whom Brazil, like China, was a country of the mind. There were candles by the water and what looked like an entire steak dinner. Even the dogs, it seemed, would not touch an offering to the old gods. How did that fit into Emil’s schema?
The sky had lightened by the time he recrossed the avenue and approached the Valhalla Guest House, so he had a clear sight of the grey hulk that rose up from the verandah like a whale surfacing for air.
“Good morning! It’s Herr Gruber, isn’t it?” The words came out in two bursts. The grey hulk could now be identified as a large German in a striped bathing costume. He had his arms folded behind his neck. He threw himself back on the deck, then raised up, as he continued his sit-ups.
“You must be Engineer Hossbach. My sister mentioned you.”
Hossbach abandoned his sit-ups and pumped Johnny’s hand. Running on the spot, he said, “Delighted, delighted. Come on, I’ll race you to the water.”
“Perhaps later—”
“Nonsense. One must keep up a regime.” He slapped Johnny on the shoulder and went bounding down the steps. On the pavement he wheeled around and marked time, shunting his knees up and down with such fanatical dedication that Johnny couldn’t help himself; he grinned and went loping after Hossbach.
“Have to keep fit!” Hossbach roared as they jogged between the palms. “The Latin races are soft! The mongrel races — just look around!”
Johnny let Hossbach beat him to the water’s edge. Or perhaps he merely flattered himself that he had conceded the race because, despite his bulk, the German was surprisingly fleet.
“Did I tell you there is a forfeit?” Hossbach asked, standing in the surf with his hands on his hips, swaying his head from side to side.
“What forfeit?”
“I would like your permission to take your sister out.”
“I understand she’s already accepted. Besides, I can’t remember when she asked me for permission to do any-thing.”
“But that’s not right,” Hossbach said, with apparent earnestness. “A fine Aryan girl like that. It is the duty of the head of her family to protect her.”
“I think you’d better explain that to her yourself.” Helene was going to have a merry time with her suitor, he thought.
“Then perhaps I may ask for another forfeit.”
“I suppose you can ask.”
“I would like to invite you to have dinner with me. I have found an excellent place. Fine Bavarian cooking. Only Germans go there.”
“You forget I’m not German.”
Hossbach laughed and patted his arm. “German, Austrian, what’s the difference? Wasn’t the Führer born in Austria? We are all the same Volk.” He winked at Johnny. “Besides, your lovely sister told me about your sympathies,” he added conspiratorially. “We may be able to do one another some good.”
“Naturally, I’ll be pleased to assist you in any way possible. Helene didn’t tell me what line of business you’re in.”
“I’m trying to land a certain contract for German business.”
“Then you’re dealing with the Brazilian government?”
“With some officials, yes. But business here isn’t easy. These people have no sense of punctuality. I could do with the benefit of your experience. What do you say to that dinner?”
“It would give me great pleasure. But I’m afraid I have to go away on business.”
“I believe your sister said you deal in cigars.”
Johnny inclined his head.
“What an agreeable profession. You’ll be going to Bahia, I suppose? Isn’t that where they make the best Brazilian cigars?”
Johnny nodded again. “Do you know Bahia?”
“Niggertown,” Hossbach spat, with sudden violence. “My boat docked there overnight. The Negroes are entirely given over to sex and superstition. If you want to know why this country is weak, look there.”
“You seem to have learned a lot about Brazil in a short time,” Johnny remarked in a neutral tone.
“I was in Bahia, and I was in Blumenau,” Hossbach said. “Two different poles, one indicating the problem, the other the solution. Do you know Blumenau? You don’t? But you must go. I can even arrange it for you. It’s in Santa Catarina, in the south. A German community, true to its race, with German newspapers and German schools. There are a million Volksdeutsche in Brazil. Think what they would accomplish if they were shaped into a single fist!”
“I see that we have a lot to talk about,” Johnny said. “But for now, I’m afraid I have a boat to catch.”
“Don’t worry about your sister. I’ll look after her while you’re away.”
“I’m quite sure you will.”
He left Hossbach on the beach, engaged in a new bout of calisthenics. His large, heaving figure seemed to hold magnetic fascination for a small tribe of brown-skinned boys, who had squatted nearby to watch. Hossbach talked and looked like a coarse buffoon, with his pink, bulging face and his yellow hair, cropped so close that the skin showed through. But Johnny had glimpsed raw cunning behind those piggy eyes, and he was persuaded that the engineer was no more engaged in legitimate import-export business than he. Hossbach’s visit to Blumenau suggested that he might be an envoy from the foreign section of the Nazi party, which was reaching out aggressively to mobilize German communities all over the world in the Führer’s cause. Equally, Hossbach could be a Gestapo agent, sent to hunt down the anti-Nazis who were seeking exile in South America in ever-increasing numbers, and to make friends in the local police.
Either way, Hossbach’s arrival at the guest house was an unwelcome complication. They would need to take soundings, to find out what Hossbach was really up to. Johnny was confident that whatever a woman could wheedle out of a man, Helene would get.
4
The great city of Recife sprawled across two muddy rivers behind a reef, like a giant crab. Up in the hills, in the leafy quarters of Dos Irmaos and Madalena, were the mansions built on sugar, patrolled day and night by police and private guards. Down in the muck were the mocambos, squalid encampments of wooden shacks that were slowly sinking into the swamp. Infants and yellow dogs fought over scraps among rotting heaps of garbage. Adults and older children went digging for crabs in the mud.
“It is the perfect cycle,” Tatu explained. “There is a type of crab peculiar to this coast. It feeds on decomposing flesh — human flesh. These unfortunates live on the crabs. When they die, the crabs live on them.”
Johnny looked back. The American, the radio man, was only halfway up the slope, even though Johnny was lugging the heaviest part of his equipment. Harvey Prince had acquired a following. Bare brown children with saucer eyes, their stomachs distended by malnutrition, hobbled along beside him on stilt legs. Harvey kept coughing into a handkerchief. The American had dressed like a big game hunter, down to the leopard-skin band around his hat. Now the trousers of his very new, very expensive safari suit were caked with mud and more dubious substances, and he looked ready to throw up his breakfast.
Though Johnny had taken an instant dislike to the young Californian, he could feel passing sympathy with his reactions. In the favelas of Rio and the barracos of Bahia, where the steamer had docked, there was beauty even in the most abject poverty. Johnny remembered the brok
en streets around the Terreiro de Jesus, in the old upper city of Bahia, where black chickens ran across the cobblestones and wild-flowers grew out of the crumbling walls. What man in his right mind would swap that for gas cooking and running water in a sooty industrial suburb in Liverpool or Chicago or Berlin? But in the mocambos of Recife, poverty was terror. It reduced a man, body and soul, to an alimentary canal that was never filled.
Johnny puffed steadily on his pipe. The smoke helped to obscure the stench of ordure and advanced decay. At the top of the rise was a circle of one-room huts, only a small step up from the shanties below, and a larger building with a pitched roof and, rising from it, a wooden cross. This house of God had little in common with the hundred baroque churches and cathedrals that raised their glories above the city. With their Italian saints and their altars of gold and silver, they did not speak to the mocambos; they were rich men’s apologies to God for lives spent without concern for his laws, eleventh-hour payment for indulgences by people who despised the judgment of others but were terrified, on their deathbeds, of a final reckoning. This church was different.
The man who came to greet them wore rope sandals under his cassock. He walked stoop-shouldered as if to conceal his height.
He gave Tatu the briefest embrace and asked, “Did you bring the morphine?”
Tatu handed him a parcel, and the priest vanished into the nearest hut through a crowd that was waiting in line, three abreast.
“He’s everything to these people,” Tatu explained. “Doctor, teacher, miracle worker. They call him Father Badό.”
“Badsts? But that’s an insult, isn’t it? Doesn’t it mean simpleton, or half-wit?”
Tatu smiled. “His name is Baudouin. But the children couldn’t say it. Now he makes everyone call him Father Badό. He says it fits.”
They sat in the priest’s own quarters to wait for him. He cooked, slept and studied between the same four walls, his bed a rough hammock, his table an upturned packing case.