by Robert Moss
The letter had been drafted by Emil with advice from the chief of the party’s regional directorate for the north, a man code-named Cato who was known to Johnny only through his reports. This Cato shared none of Tatu’s caution, perhaps because he did not share the same risks. He burned with the same fever as Emil and the leadership in Rio. He had even advised that conditions were ripe for creating soviets among the peasants of the north — the China trap all over again.
The bandit in spectacles stumbled through the letter to Lampião, missing syllables and punctuation marks, and succeeded in making it sound like exactly what it was: an awkward translation from a foreign language and, behind it, a foreign thought process. The letter began with flattery, hailing Lampião’s heroic exploits and anointing the most notorious of the cangaceiros “the legendary champion of the oppressed.” A lengthy passage followed which described the development of class struggle in Brazil and the need for an anti-imperialist revolution.
The Electric Captain grunted and yawned and scratched his private parts through most of this. He blinked at a reference to “the latifundist class.” He muttered something to the reader, who paused.
“Hey,” he addressed Johnny. “You saw that piece of dogmeat outside?”
“I saw it,” Johnny said, thinking of the corpse impaled on the thorn tree.
“He used to farm this place. Does that mean he’s a latifundist?”
“How many acres did he own?”
“Who can say? There aren’t any fences in the catinga. He had three women to himself, though. And he was ass-buddy with the colonel.”
“Then he was a latifundist.”
“Good. Go on reading,” he ordered his man.
The next section was about the need to carve up the big estates and give the land to the tiller.
“Chickenshit,” Captain Eldtrico interrupted. “What do you think this land is worth? It’s cattle and water holes that matter, and horses and women. You think Lampião cares who owns this godforsaken wilderness? You think I give a shit? You think any lousy cowboy will fight over that?”
“There’s more,” Johnny said.
The reader squinted and stumbled on. The last part of the letter was all that mattered. Emil made the proposal he believed the bandit chief couldn’t refuse. The revolutionaries would help him to take vengeance on his enemies. They would provide him with money, thousands of American dollars, to buy guns. In return, the cangaceiros would place themselves at the disposal of the revolutionary high command as a mobile guerrilla force.
“You see,” Johnny commented. “The gold you took from us was just a down payment.”
Captain Eletrico was plainly intrigued by this promised fortune, but puzzled.
“You are here, showing me these things,” he said. “What have you got to do with any of us? Where do you come from? You talk as if your mouth is full of rocks.”
“From Germany. From the other side of the ocean.”
“From Germany.” The Electric Captain rocked with laughter. “Most of us here haven’t been further away than Piancό. Recife, Olinda, those are already foreign countries. And that fancy boy you brought with you. Where is he from?”
“He’s from California. From the United States.”
“Ah, these gringos like to use the back door. Isn’t that right?” He nudged one of his companions, who was whittling away at a stick with a wickedly curved knife, and all the bandits started to snigger. Captain Eletrico’s assessment of Harvey was evidently the same as Helene’s.
“High command — revolution — all these fat words,” the bandit chief went on. “They mean nothing without a man. Who is your man?”
“Prestes,” Johnny replied quietly.
“What?” The Electric Captain looked thunderous. “Carlos Prestes.”
“Is he here?” The bandit erupted from his seat and squeezed Johnny’s throat with his thumbs. “Tell me where.”
“Not here,” Johnny gasped. “Not — in — Brazil.”
The bandit released him abruptly, dropping him so the back of his head thudded against the bare floor.
“You know Nana?”
Johnny shook his head.
“Four days’ ride north of here. That’s where I’m from. My brother was there when Prestes’ men came to Piancό, eight years ago. They’re good Catholics in Piancό they don’t want anything to do with the Reds. There was a priest called Padre Aristides. He decided to make a stand against the Prestes Column. He barricaded himself inside a church with some of the townsfolk. My brother was one. Prestes’ men had them outnumbered. They were gauchos, throat slitters from the south. When they captured the church, they cut the throat of every man inside and dumped the bodies in a mass grave, without honour. My brother is in that grave.”
The Electric Captain was flushed, and breathing hard.
“So you see,” he went on, “I won’t be joining Capitão Prestes. You’re a very brave man to come here and use his name. Or a very stupid one. Chain him to the stove,” he ordered his men. One of them produced a leg iron that looked like a relic of the slave trade. The metal was rusted but solid.
The heat of the fire scorched Johnny’s bare skin.
“What are you going to do with us?”
“I could sell you to the state police. But this is something personal. Because of Piancό. You’re a man, and I’ll treat you like one. In the morning, you’ll see why they call me Captain Eletrico.”
The night was lacerated by the American’s screams from another part of the house. It was only too easy to picture what they were doing to him. Johnny struggled with his ropes and singed his wrists trying to burn through them by pushing up against the hot iron of the stove. He had almost succeeded when one of the bandits came in and slouched down in a chair. The manacle bit into the flesh of his leg; he couldn’t shift it.
Between the screams and his efforts to wriggle out of his bonds, Johnny brooded on the web of folly and likely betrayal that had dragged him into this hell. If the massacre of Piancό had really happened, how could Emil and the others have deluded themselves that a revolt bearing the name of Prestes would be welcomed with open arms in this wilderness of thorns? The one-eyed priest at Juazeiro must have known what their reception would be. Perhaps Emil knew, too. It occurred to Johnny that the priest was not the only one who might have been happy to see them riding off to their deaths.
Not here, a voice tolled inside Johnny’s skull. I’m not ready. The sense of waste rose up in his gorge.
It was absurd. He had survived the Gestapo and the OGPU only to find his life in the hands of a scruffy Brazilian bandit with a ridiculous name.
He started laughing. It became uncontrollable, rocking his whole body, until a bandit came and kicked him in the ribs to shut him up.
He woke at first light. The stove was dead, and his hands were numb. There was movement outside, the sound of horses whinnying and stamping their hooves in the dust. The bandits were preparing to move out. There was a strong smell of petrol or kerosene.
Captain Eletrico swaggered in, wearing Harvey’s safari jacket under his leather vest. He was sporting his full regalia, complete with crossed bandoliers and a brace of pistols in his belt. He had a rifle slung from his shoulder and, on his head, his high leather hat, hung with amulets and silver stars. “I’m a tidy man,” he announced to Johnny. “I always clean up after myself.”
He proceeded to sprinkle kerosene from a rusty can along the outer wall.
“Nobody can say I’m not a fair man, too.”
He bent down and inspected the solid links of the chain that bound Johnny’s foot to one of the thick iron legs of the stove, which was bolted to the floor. Satisfied that the chain would not give, he sawed through the ropes around Johnny’s wrists. Johnny felt prickling pains as the blood began to flow back into his hands.
“An old place like this shouldn’t take too long to burn,” the bandit said. “But I’m giving you a chance.” He set his knife down on the floor. Johnny calculated
that it was just within his reach, but the captain had his boot on the blade.
“Maybe you’ll roast. Or maybe you’ll cut yourself loose. It’s possible. Of course, you won’t walk so good.” Eletrico’s lips curled back to display a row of ruined yellow teeth.
Johnny stared at the knife and the leg iron, and the bandit’s meaning dawned on him in a sudden, sickening perception. He would never be able to saw through the chain before the fire consumed the house. But he might just have time to hack off his own foot, there above the ankle.
The bandit played with a box of matches. He struck one, but merely to light his cigar. He struck another, and blew it out.
He started backing away towards the door.
“Goodbye, gringo,” he said, striking a third match. Johnny grabbed for the knife, got up onto his knees and hurled it at the man with the hat full of stars.
I won’t die alone, he promised himself.
He aimed for the face, but his fingers were stiff. The knife flew low, missing its target.
Any soldier knows that the third light is unlucky. The dagger tore into the bandit’s abdomen, just below the belt. He howled and clutched at the wound.
The lighted match, loosed from his hand, fell to the floor, and the room exploded into blue and yellow flame. Blinded by fire and smoke, the bandit reeled backwards. Something clattered to the floor. Johnny leaped at Eletrico, but the gap between them was too great. The leg iron stopped him in mid-flight, and his face hit the ground too fast for him to cushion the fall. Choking on the acrid smoke, blood streaming from his nose, he writhed and clawed helplessly, like a tethered animal. Then his hand closed on something that hadn’t been there before — the barrel of the bandit’s rifle. He yanked at it, hoisted it up under his arm, pushed the muzzle against the chain and fired. Slivers of metal like tiny razor blades sliced at his face and chest. But he was free.
Eletrico had managed to hobble to the door.
Johnny hurled himself at the bandit and brought him down in a rugby tackle. They landed in a flailing heap on the verandah. Johnny rolled to keep the captain’s body between himself and the cangaceiros who were gathered in the clearing, levelling their rifles and shotguns over the necks of their horses. The Californian was with them. They had dressed him in a cotton shift like a girl and roped him to the saddle tree of a heavy, black-bearded ruffian who was sporting Harvey’s hand-tooled San Antonio boots.
Eletrico was grappling for one of his pistols, but Johnny was stronger. He wrenched the gun out of the captain’s hand and jammed it up behind his ear.
“Tell them to back off,” Johnny ordered.
The bandit hesitated. His breath came in short, fetid bursts.
“Tell them to back off,” Johnny repeated, “or I’ll blow the back of your head off.”
Eletrico gave the command. The horses backed off a few paces.
“Now tell them to sling their rifles and dismount. Very slowly.”
Grudgingly the cangaceiros obeyed. Johnny was nervous of pushing them too far. It was hard to tell how far Captain Eletrico’s authority carried.
Johnny could feel the heat of the fire at his back. The timbers of the porch creaked and swayed.
Painfully, he got onto his feet and used Eletrico as a human shield as he inched his way down the steps away from the burning house.
“Now tell them to cut the gringo loose.”
Harvey’s captor laughed as he slit the young Californian’s bonds and gave him a pat on the rump.
Harvey shrieked like a madman and snatched the fat man’s rifle from its harness. He fired wildly. The bullets vanished among the thorn trees. Some of the horses panicked and ran off. The cangaceiros went diving for cover, drawing their pistols.
“Harvey, no!” Johnny bellowed.
“They’re going to pay,” the Californian sobbed. His whole body was shaking. “Those cocksuckers.”
He fired at Blackbeard, who was rolling over on the ground. The bullet went wide again.
“Stop it now!” Johnny yelled again. “You’ll only get yourself killed!”
He said to Eletrico, “Tell them there’ll be no more shooting. Tell them to lay down their guns.”
The spell would not last much longer, Johnny thought. He could see some of the bandits widening the circle, edging away to the right and left, so that he would not be able to watch all of them at once.
He fired a single warning shot that made one of them dance.
“Stay in your places!” he roared. “Harvey! Get two — no, three — of the horses. And for God’s sake, take some of their clothes.”
Five miles from the railroad terminus, Johnny told Prince he could have the honour of disposing of the hostage. The Californian shot Captain Eletrico once in the chest and once, for good measure, in the balls. Then he threw up. There was blood amid the bile.
Johnny made no comment then or during the three hours they had to wait for the train back to Recife.
6
Colin Bailey had precious little time in those days to worry about Brazil. He made a second trip to Copenhagen to follow up on Johnny’s leads. Working with an old friend in the Danish security police, he was able to roll up a whole Soviet illegals network. To deflect suspicion from Johnny, they tried to make it look like a lucky strike. The police, supposedly on the trail of a gang of counterfeiters, conducted a house-to-house search in the street where the illegal was living.
Bailey went on to Berlin. De Salis had removed the clerk in the passport office whom Johnny had identified as a Russian agent, but there was deep concern about leaks to the Germans.
“The Gestapo has no need to crack our ciphers,” de Salis had cabled, “so long as it can listen to His Majesty’s Ambassador on the telephone.”
For once, Bailey found himself in complete agreement with Adam de Salis. For nights at a time, the residency was left in the sole charge of a German porter who could be presumed to be working for the Gestapo. The ambassador, a fervent believer in the idea of a natural alliance between Britain and Germany, shared all the secrets of the embassy with his telephone.
Two years of first-hand experience of the Hitler regime had worked changes in de Salis. He had developed a network of anti-Nazi sources in business and the German military. From them, and from some of the would-be refugees who streamed daily into the passport office, de Salis chronicled the German race to rearm. He had become convinced that Hitler was hell-bent on a war of aggression and could no longer be contained by his generals. He was disgusted by the foreign secretary’s efforts to curry favour with Hitler on the dictator’s terms. The British government and the British press seemed determined to give Herr Hitler the benefit of the doubt. De Salis’s newspaper had suppressed an article he had written on the growth of the Luftwaffe, on the grounds that it would offend the German government and cause children in London to have nightmares of being bombed in their beds.
“The government must be made to see the writing on the wall,” de Salis insisted.
This was a new Adam, a bit alarmist, perhaps, but a welcome change from the vain intriguer Bailey had sparred with in the past. Bailey was pleased to acknowledge a new ally. In the summer of 1935 there were few enough men of influence in London who had taken Hitler’s measure. Churchill was one and Vansittart another. But theirs were isolated voices in the House of Commons and the Foreign Office. Even that silly peacock Ribbentrop had not quite managed to rupture the British establishment’s love affair with the Nazi dictator by greeting the King, at a diplomatic reception, with a stiff-armed salute and a cry of “Heil Hitler!”
One of Bailey’s own colleagues dismissed a report on Hitler’s designs on Austria and Czechoslovakia as a plant, the probable work of “Jews and Bolshevists.” Like all establishments, Whitehall was hostile to intelligence that contradicted its fixed opinions.
Johnny’s account of his night call on Stalin had caused a passing stir but was too exotic to take root. Nobody in Whitehall believed in the possibility of a deal between the German an
d Soviet dictators. The general view was that Hitler’s ambitions lay to the east, not to the west, and that it was clearly in Britain’s interest to keep him pointed that way. Bailey, too, was convinced that the moment when an understanding might have been possible between Moscow and Berlin had passed. Reviled by the Nazis, Soviet Russia was becoming a popular cause amongst the people who were most alarmed about the rising tide of fascism. After long hesitation, Stalin had decided to break out of isolation. He had signed pacts with the French and the Czechs. According to an interesting tidbit from Johnny, apparently gleaned from Emil Brandt, the much-delayed Seventh Congress of the Comintern would definitely take place in July; the Popular Front against fascism would be the order of the day.
When Bailey got back from Berlin, he found several cables and letters from Rio waiting for him. Harry Maitland had been scrupulous about filing his weekly reports. It was plain that he was enjoying his work and had established a good rapport with Johnny. If his style was at times exuberant, his judgement was shrewd enough. The longest of the telegrams described a disastrous expedition Johnny had made to the northeast. It seemed he had been lucky to save his skin. An American who had accompanied him had suffered a complete nervous breakdown. The whole thing had the flavour of a bad horse opera. Harry suggested that Emil must have read too many of those Wild West adventure stories that had been all the rage in Germany a few years ago.
Failure to sign up the bandits for the revolt had not slowed the momentum of the Comintern operation. Emil and his associates had drawn up a list of cabinet ministers who would be appointed to a “national revolutionary government.” The men selected were not openly Communist. They could be relied on to take party orders because they were secret members or because, through greed or ambition, they had placed themselves in the party’s debt.
In another message Maitland described a curious complication in Johnny’s life. There was a new lodger at his guest house, a German called Hossbach, who was paying court both to Johnny and his “sister.” At their last encounter, Hossbach had boasted of his prowess as an aviator. He claimed to have served under Goring and to be on intimate terms with the former air ace who was now the second most powerful man in the Reich. He had told Johnny that he was holding himself in readiness for “the call.” He was taking a keen interest in German refugees who were coming to South America and had sought to enlist Johnny’s help in spying on a Jewish research scientist who had once worked for I.G. Farben. Johnny had played along, affecting sympathy for the Nazi cause.