by Robert Moss
Then, through the smoke, he saw something that made him forget the state of his stomach. The lobby was full of white uniforms, and at their head Admiral Cavalcanti was levelling his revolver at Harry. He held the gun like a duellist, his right arm outstretched, his left folded away in the crook of his back.
Harry rolled again, but his foot snagged in the belt of Boy Scout’s stolen uniform. Cavalcanti’s finger tightened on the trigger.
His attention riveted on Maitland, the admiral did not see Colonel Plinio until he struck. Very precisely, Plinio cracked the butt of his own gun against the admiral’s wrist.
The bullet went wide, and Cavalcanti dropped his revolver, cursing violently.
“I’m sorry, Admiral,” Plinio said blandly. “But you nearly made an irreparable mistake. This is one of our friends.”
Maitland got to his feet and met Cavalcanti’s eyes. They were pink with hate. He wondered if the admiral had really made a mistake.
“Did you kill this one?” Harry challenged him, tapping Boy Scout’s body lightly with the toe of his shoe.
“What of it?”
“Was it necessary?”
“He was Communist scum. Who cares how they lose their skins?”
Colonel Plinio took out his cigar case and offered it to Harry and Cavalcanti. The admiral shook his head impatiently.
“You might dismiss your men now,” Plinio remarked to him. “The police have everything under control. By the way, where were your marines when the president was under attack?”
“The Reds staged a diversion at the front of the palace.”
“That’s very interesting. We obviously missed quite a lot.”
Colonel Plinio noticed the president’s secretary trotting down the stairs and excused himself.
He returned almost immediately with a beatific smile on his face.
“I regret to inform you, Admiral, that it is my duty to place you under arrest.”
“I am answerable only to the military authorities!”
“And to the President of the Republic.”
“What is the charge?”
“Treason and attempted assassination.”
“This is a farce! You have no evidence!”
“On the contrary. The president has just received a personal telephone call from Doctor Alcibiades, our honourable mayor. I believe you know him. Doctor Alcibiades made the denunciation.”
Cavalcanti gaped, then exhibited a mastery of nautical abuse that awed everyone within earshot.
“Are you ready, Admiral?” Plinio pursued. “Or would you prefer to be left alone with your revolver? I believe that way is preferred by officers of the old school in some countries. No?”
Cavalcanti glowered at him, and Plinio motioned for the detectives to disarm him.
“You see,” the colonel murmured to Harry as they made their exit together. “We’re Brazilians. Even the worst of us. We don’t kill the bull.”
7
On a damp day in London in early December, Colin Bailey put aside Maitland’s report and pictured the man who had written it. He imagined Harry, on his verandah in Tijuca, listening to the birdcalls in the forest and puffing at his cigar while the lovely Luisa brought caipirinhas. Or perhaps he had gone south to his ranch, to fish for dourado with a bright spoon on the end of his line — silver, of course, was best — or to chase roebuck through the pampas grass in a mock-up of a West Country hunt. He had certainly earned a holiday, and Bailey would have liked nothing better than to chuck the London drizzle and join him.
Only two military units in Rio joined the Communist rising in the early hours of November 27. One was the Third Regiment, which never managed to leave Praia Vermelha. The commandant managed to get away from the rebels and held them pinned down for a time with the aid of a loyal machine-gun company, while the government sent reinforcements round in the buses of the power company. The War Minister took personal charge, talking to the commandant from a public telephone at a gas station on the corner of the Avenida Pasteur. The rebel chief, a bantam captain they called Macuco, refused an offer of conditional surrender. At first light, the government sent warships and fighter planes to shell and strafe the barracks into submission. The flimsy wood and stucco pavilions caught fire like dry tinder. At about one in the afternoon, the surviving rebels gave up the ghost. They were marched through Botafogo in front of jeering crowds. Macuco and the other ringleaders were locked up in an old prison ship, the Pedro I, that was resurrected for the occasion.
The other unit that rebelled was the School of Military Aviation out at Campo dos Afonsos, fifteen miles west of the city, next to the headquarters complex in the Vila Militar. This was a cadets’ affair led by a Communist instructor. The Air Force regulars at the base next door were alerted in good time. But the school was hard to isolate, because the security gate was unfinished and there was not even a simple fence around most of the perimeter. Captain Socrates drove in at the wheel of a roadster packed with his friends. Though apparently drunk, he arranged the seizure of arms and training planes, shot a loyalist lieutenant and marched off at the head of his cadets to capture the air base next door. His party was met by government troops, shot up pretty badly and the whole business was over by sunup.
The revolt never got started in the Second Regiment or at Army HQ, because the leads from Johnny enabled the authorities to arrest all the key conspirators before the deadline arrived at their destination. Prestes’ couriers to garrisons outside Rio never left.
The population at large was never involved. Confronted with the prospect of imminent rout, Communist labour organizers disregarded their orders to lead a general strike. The special edition of the Red paper, A Manhã, calling for a mass rebellion was seized by the police before it could be distributed. There were a few acts of sabotage — the vital switch point at Barra do Pirai on the Rio — Sao Paulo line was blown up — but they had no effect on the outcome of events.
The defeat of the coup attempt in Rio coincided with the collapse of the risings in the north that had triggered it. The ragtag army that invaded Recife’s Largo da Paz was shot to pieces by regular army units with field guns. The most notable achievement of the revolt in Recife was that the celebrated German airship, the Graf Zeppelin, en route to the city on a journey that had started in Bathurst, had to alter its flight plan.
Hearing rumours of disaster, the festive junta that had held power in Natal since Saturday night boarded a merchant ship in the harbour and tried to make off with the money it had looted from the local bank. They were pursued and overtaken by two navy cruisers. “Santa,” the Communist chief, was found to have his share of the loot sewn up inside his trouser cuffs. Rebels fleeing inland were hunted down by gunmen hired for the job by the local land barons.
What was the meaning of the whole affair? Bailey had one version in front of him — a torn-out page from the New York Times forwarded by a friend in Manhattan. The Times’ man on the spot, a certain J. W. White (filing from Buenos Aires to avoid Brazilian censorship), gave the Communists a clean bill of health. In his judgment, the revolt was “not communistic, as reported by the federal authorities. It was socialistic and strongly nationalistic.” The demands of the rebels were said to be “mild.”
Bailey had read far too much of this sort of thing over the years to let it anger him. He had read it in cables from ambassadors as well as newspaper articles. Sometimes he detected the hand of a Goebbels or a Willi Münzenberg. More often it was a matter of people believing what they wanted to believe and screening out conflicting evidence. This was known to happen in intelligence, as in other trades; hence the difficulty he experienced in persuading some of his colleagues that Hitler was as much of a menace as Stalin, or vice versa. There were relatively few people, in Bailey’s experience, who found much satisfaction in unearthing facts that flouted their preconceptions. Yet a willingness to confront facts of that kind — even a delight in so doing — was, in his estimation, one of the hallmarks of an intelligence professional.
So he sat mulling over the questions that Harry’s report, though masterly in its way, had left hanging.
One thing was clear: Johnny had played his role superbly. Thanks to his information, a police agent had triggered the mutiny in Natal weeks before the revolt was supposed to begin. A clever bit of provocation by the police chief in Recife had ensured that the second barrel went off, forcing the hand of the Comintern chiefs in Rio. Thanks to Johnny again, the planned coup in Rio was dead in the water hours before it began.
Yet the affair could have ended in tragedy if the assassination plot had succeeded.
There were several things that intrigued Bailey.
Was there a Gestapo agent — perhaps Nilo — inside the South American bureau?
What role, if any, had Max Fabrikant played in the events of November 27?
Had the Fascists mounted a provocation of their own, hoping to use the murder of the president by Reds as a pretext to seize power for themselves?
Whose side was Doctor Alcibiades on?
Bailey had not exhausted the list when C. called him on the direct line.
“Would you care to stop in for a spot of tea?”
Bailey stowed his papers away, shut up the filing cabinet and reversed the little cardboard sign that read “Open” on one side and “Locked” on the other.
“Norton at the Foreign Office sent round another billet-doux from their chap in Rio,” C. said casually, when they were settled on either side of the teapot.
“Sir Evelyn Paine?”
“Quite so.”
“Is he bleating again?”
“On the contrary. He seems to be pleased as punch. The president called him in to express his undying gratitude to His Majesty’s Government for saving the country, or words to that effect. Sir Evelyn would be glad to be told, at some point, exactly what he did.”
“I’ll look into it.”
“I gather your young friend Maitland has done rather well. Bring him over so I can get a look at him next time he’s in London.”
“With pleasure.”
“But you might tell him to try not to behave quite so much like something out of John Buchan’s thrillers.”
Diplomatically, Bailey allowed this to pass without comment.
“Your chap Johnny doesn’t cease to astonish me,” C. went on. “I thought we might do something for him, to show appreciation and all that.”
“What did you have in mind? A bonus?”
“Good heavens, no. I thought I’d ask the prime minister to get him a gong in the Birthday Honours. Naturally, we couldn’t allow any mention of it in the papers. But the gesture would count for rather a lot, don’t you think?”
“Johnny had an Iron Cross once,” Bailey observed. “I believe he chucked it overboard.”
C. looked at him as if he had just broken wind.
“I am referring to the Order of the British Empire,” C. said grimly.
“It would mean something to Johnny if the King presented it in person.”
“Good God! The man’s a bloody foreigner!”
“Quite so.” Bailey’s expression was respectful but unyielding.
Part III - THE PATH OF THE DEAD (1936)
We Communists are all dead men on leave.
-EUGENE LEVINE,
leader of the 1919 Munich revolt, shortly before he faced the firing squad
11 - The Chinese Method
I was not averse to the idea of shooting a property owner simply because he was a property owner. so it was reasonable that the propertied class should punish me for my intentions.
-GRACILIANO RAMOS, Memόrias do Cárcere
1
The days slipped by, and Rio returned to its normal pursuits. Driving along the Avenida Atlantica, it was hard to believe that the country had just escaped a revolution. Even the principal conspirators were not acting like hunted men. Harry Maitland made a tour of the beach suburbs and caught a glimpse of Emil and his wife taking their constitutional along the beach. Emil had his jacket over his arm and had rolled up his sleeves. He wore suspenders and a grey felt hat tilted back from his forehead. He was an alien presence, a world removed from the copper-skinned beauties lazing on the beach. But he did not look like a man about to jump into a ditch. He might have been taking his summer holiday at Sochi, on the Black Sea.
Harry was puzzled that Emil and his team had not simply cut and run after the failure of the revolt. What were they waiting for?
Johnny brought some of the answers in the early days of December. They met at one of their old haunts, a crowded gaming room in the Necrôpolis, at the back of the Copacabana Palace Hotel.
He’s nervous, Maitland thought, watching Johnny from across the roulette table. He wasn’t surprised when Johnny bet on red, signalling that he wanted a personal meeting somewhere else. Maitland placed some chips on number four, one of several locations both men had memorized.
Johnny bet on twenty-four, which gave them the hour.
Their rendezvous took place at midnight in a seamen’s tavern near the docks.
“Are you all right?”
Johnny was swaying a bit.
“A drink too many,” he said. “I’ll live.”
“Is Max on to you?”
“He has suspicions.”
“Nothing more?”
“That’s enough, isn’t it?” Johnny came back savagely.
“He’ll move when he’s ready. Not before.”
“What’s going on? Why haven’t they tried to get out?”
“They think they’re still in business.”
“What?”
“You heard me. They’re planning to try again.”
“Who?”
“Emil. Prestes. Nilo.”
“They’re crazy.”
“Perhaps. But Emil has persuaded Moscow to back them.”
“I can’t believe it.”
“Believe what you like. I brought you a copy of his report.” He handed over a squat manila envelope.
“How did you get it?”
Johnny gave him a lopsided grin. He said, “I’ve been in this business for longer than you. No offense, Harry.”
“Of course not.”
* * *
Play it long, Colin Bailey urged in his cables. If you jerk on the line, the big fish will break it.
But Harry didn’t like it. Johnny refused the stack of white five-pound notes he offered, the bonus Colin Bailey had finally extracted from C. and the misers in the accounts department. Perhaps Johnny’s disinterest was a professional reflex. What was he going to do with the cash in Rio? But Johnny also seemed reticent and evasive. He refused point-blank to talk about Sigrid now, which Maitland thought was a bad sign. Maybe shared adversity was pulling him closer to old comrades.
The Comintern network began to fall apart a few days before Christmas, on the night Vasco’s house went up in smoke. Johnny had described the Spanish painter’s home in Grajati, where explosives were hidden in the cellar and under the stairs and the walls were covered with surrealist canvases of melting clocks and women whose bottoms turned into cellos. By Johnny’s account, Vasco had to be awarded full marks for guts, if not for brains. Since he’d lost three fingers from his painting hand in that accident on the beach, he had been training himself to hold a brush in the other hand. He even practiced gripping a brush between his toes. According to Johnny, his footwork was pretty good.
In the wake of the mass insurrection that never took place, Vasco had been left sitting on top of three hundred homemade bombs and a truckload of dynamite. Harry first learned what had happened from his morning copy of O Globo.
It wasn’t clear how it started. A cigarette, carelessly dropped on the floor, sparks from the charcoal stove in the kitchen, a lamp overturned in a domestic squabble, a child playing with matches...Johnny’s hunch was that canisters holding the two components for a binary explosive, the chemicals he had described to illiterate recruits as “rat poison” and “salt and pepper,” had been
allowed to get damp in the closet under the stairs. The soggy cardboard was eaten away, the chemicals mixed — and the roof of Vasco’s house blew off.
The Spaniard rolled out of the place with his clothes on fire and a terrified child in his arms. Distraught neighbours, their own houses ablaze, called the fire brigade and the police, who went in for Vasco’s two-year-old daughter. She was charred like a nicely barbecued chop but still living. The neighbours were ready to tear the little Basque limb from limb, though he swore blind that he thought the boxes he was storing contained only fruit and eggs. The police probably saved his life. They hauled him off for a spiritual session on the morro of San Antonio, the headquarters of the Special Police.
Vasco knew quite a few of the Comintern bosses, at least by sight, because of all the boozing and talking that had gone on in his upstairs living room. And of course he knew Johnny, though only by the cover name “Pedro” that he used among the party’s military cells.
When Harry learned of Vasco’s arrest, he concluded that the time had come to roll up the Comintern team in Rio, and advised Bailey accordingly.
With Vasco and hundreds of local Communists in jug, it was surely only a matter of time before Emil’s group accepted defeat and scattered to the four winds. Harry wanted to catch them before they got away. They had a good deal to answer for.
There was still a risk that Johnny could be blown. But in Maitland’s view the risk of using the most sensitive information from his agent — the covers and hideouts employed by Emil and his team was much less than before. If the Russians wanted to find an informer, there would be a long list of suspects to choose from, starting with the little Spaniard. Max Fabrikant would not be easy to shake off. But with any luck Max would soon be enjoying the hospitality of one of Colonel Plinio’s lockups.