High Citadel / Landslide

by Desmond Bagley

  ‘And when will that be?’ demanded McGruder.

  The sergeant shrugged. ‘Who knows?’ he said with the fatalism of one to whom officers were a race apart and their doings incomprehensible.

  McGruder snorted and withdrew to his office, where he picked up the telephone. Apparently it was still dead, but when he snapped, ‘Get me Colonel Coello at the military airfield,’ it suddenly came to life and he was put through—not to Coello, but to some underling.

  It took him over fifteen minutes before he got through to Coello and by then he was breathing hard with ill-suppressed rage. He said aggressively, ‘McGruder here. What’s all this about closing down San Antonio Mission?’

  Coello was suave. ‘But the mission is not closed, Doctor; anyone can enter.’

  ‘But I can’t leave,’ said McGruder. ‘I have work to do.’

  ‘Then do it,’ said Coello. ‘Your work is in the mission, Doctor; stick to your job—like the cobbler. Do not interfere in things which do not concern you.’

  ‘I don’t know what the hell you mean,’ snarled McGruder with a profanity he had not used since his Marine days. ‘I have to pick up a consignment of drugs at the railroad depot in Altemiros. I need them and the Cordilleran Air Force is stopping me getting them—that’s how I see it. You’re not going to look very good when this comes out, Colonel.’

  ‘But you should have said this earlier,’ said Coello soothingly. ‘I will send one of the airfield vehicles to pick them up for you. As you know, the Cordilleran Air Force is always ready to help your mission. I hear you run a very good hospital, Doctor McGruder. We are short of good hospitals in this country.’

  McGruder heard the cynical amusement in the voice. He said irascibly, ‘All right,’ and banged the phone down. Mopping his brow he thought that it was indeed fortunate there was a consignment of drugs waiting in Altemiros. He paused, wondering what to do next, then he drew a sheet of blank paper from a drawer and began writing.

  Half an hour later he had the gist of Forester’s story on paper. He folded the sheets, sealed them in an envelope and put the envelope into his pocket. All the while he was conscious of the soldier posted just outside the window who was keeping direct surveillance of him. He went out into the corridor to find another soldier lounging outside the office door whom he ignored, carrying on down towards the wards and the operating theatre. The soldier stared after him with incurious eyes and drifted down the corridor after him.

  McGruder looked for Sánchez, his second-in-command, and found him in one of the wards. Sánchez looked at his face and raised his eyebrows. ‘What is happening, Doctor?’

  ‘The local military have gone berserk,’ said McGruder unhappily. ‘And I seem to be mixed up in it—they won’t let me leave the mission.’

  ‘They won’t let anyone leave the mission,’ said Sánchez. ‘I tried.’

  ‘I must get to Altemiros,’ said McGruder. ‘Will you help me? I know I’m usually non-political, but this is different. There’s murder going on across the mountains.’

  ‘Eight Squadron came to the airfield two days ago—I have heard strange stories about Eight Squadron,’ said Sánchez reflectively. ‘You may be non-political, Doctor McGruder, but I am not. Of course I will help you.’

  McGruder turned and saw the soldier gazing blankly at him from the entrance of the ward. ‘Let’s go into your office,’ he said.

  They went to the office and McGruder switched on an X-ray viewer and pointed out the salient features of an X-ray plate to Sánchez. He left the door open and the soldier leaned on the opposite wall of the corridor, solemnly picking his teeth. ‘This is what I want you to do,’ said McGruder in a low voice.

  Fifteen minutes later he went to find the sergeant and spoke to him forthrightly. ‘What are your orders concerning the mission?’ he demanded.

  The sergeant said, ‘Not to let anyone leave—and to watch you, Doctor McGruder.’ He paused. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘I seem to have noticed that I’ve been watched,’ said McGruder with heavy irony. ‘Now, I’m going to do an operation. Old Pedro must have his kidneys seen to or he will die. I can’t have any of your men in the operating theatre, spitting all over the floor; we have enough trouble attaining asepsis as it is.’

  ‘We all know you norteamericanos are very clean,’ acknowledged the sergeant. He frowned. ‘This room—how many doors?’

  ‘One door—no windows,’ said McGruder. ‘You can come and look at it if you like; but don’t spit on the floor.’

  He took the sergeant into the operating theatre and satisfied him that there was only one entrance. ‘Very well,’ said the sergeant. ‘I will put two men outside the door—that will be all right.’

  McGruder went into the sluice room and prepared for the operation, putting on his gown and cap and fastening the mask loosely about his neck. Old Pedro was brought up on a stretcher and McGruder stood outside the door while he was pushed into the theatre. The sergeant said, ‘How long will this take?’

  McGruder considered. ‘About two hours—maybe longer. It is a serious operation, Sergeant.’

  He went into the theatre and closed the door. Five minutes later the empty stretcher was pushed out and the sergeant looked through the open door and saw the doctor masked and bending over the operating table, a scalpel in his hand. The door closed, the sergeant nodded to the sentries and wandered towards the courtyard to find a sunny spot. He quite ignored the empty stretcher being pushed by two chattering nurses down the corridor.

  In the safety of the bottom ward McGruder dropped from under the stretcher where he had been clinging and flexed the muscles of his arms. Getting too old for these acrobatics, he thought, and nodded to the nurses who had pushed in the stretcher. They giggled and went out, and he changed his clothes quickly.

  He knew of a place where the tide of prickly pear which covered the hillside overflowed into the mission grounds. For weeks he had intended to cut down the growth and tidy it up, but now he was glad that he had let it be. No sentry in his right mind would deliberately patrol in the middle of a grove of sharp-spined cactus, no matter what his orders, and McGruder thought he had a chance of getting through.

  He was right. Twenty minutes later he was on the other side of a low rise, the mission out of sight behind him and the houses of Altemiros spread in front. His clothes were torn and so was his flesh—the cactus had not been kind.

  He began to run.

  IV

  Forester was still on his stretcher. He had expected to be taken into a hospital ward and transferred to a bed, but instead the stretcher was taken into an office and laid across two chairs. Then he was left alone, but he could hear the shuffling feet of a sentry outside the door and knew he was well guarded.

  It was a large office overlooking the airfield, and he guessed it belonged to the commanding officer. There were many maps on the walls and some aerial photographs, mainly of mountain country. He looked at the décor without interest; he had been in many offices like this when he was in the American Air Force and it was all very familiar, from the group photographs of the squadron to the clock let into the boss of an old wooden propeller.

  What interested him was the scene outside. One complete wall of the office was a window and through it he could see the apron outside the control tower and, farther away, a group of hangars. He clicked his tongue as he recognized the aircraft standing on the apron—they were Sabres.

  Good old Uncle Sam, he thought in disgust; always willing to give handouts, even military handouts, to potential enemies. He looked at the fighter planes with intense curiosity. They were early model Sabres, now obsolete in the major air forces, but quite adequate for the defence of a country like Cordillera which had no conceivable military enemies of any strength. As far as he could see, they were the identical model he had flown in Korea. I could fly one of those, he thought, if I could just get into the cockpit.

  There were four of them standing in a neat line and he saw they were being serviced. Suddenl
y he sat up—no, not serviced—those were rockets going under the wings. And those men standing on the wings were not mechanics, they were armourers loading cannon shells. He did not have to be close enough to see the shells; he had seen this operation performed many times in Korea and he knew automatically that these planes were being readied for instant action.

  Christ! he thought bitterly; it’s like using a steam hammer to crack a nut. O’Hara and the others won’t have a chance against this lot. But then he became aware of something else—this must mean that O’Hara was still holding out; that the communists across the bridge were still baffled. He felt exhilarated and depressed at the same time as he watched the planes being readied.

  He lay back again and felt the gun pressing into the small of his back. This was the time to prepare for action, he realized, so he pulled out the gun, keeping a wary eye on the door, and examined it. It was the pistol he had brought over the mountain—Grivas’s pistol. Cold and exposure to the elements had not done it any good—the oil had dried out and the action was stiff—but he thought it would work. He snapped the action several times, catching the rounds as they flipped from the breech, then he reloaded the magazine and worked the action again, putting a round in the breech ready for instant shooting.

  He stowed the pistol by his side under the coverlet and laid his hand on the butt. Now he was ready—as ready as he could be.

  He waited a long time and began to get edgy. He felt little tics all over his body as small muscles jumped and twitched, and he had never been so wide-awake in his life. That’s McGruder’s stimulant he thought: I wonder what it was and if it’ll mix with all the coca I’ve taken.

  He kept an eye on the Sabres outside. The ground crews had completed their work long before someone opened the door of the office, and Forester looked up to see a man with a long, saturnine face looking down at him. The man smiled. ‘Colonel Coello, a sus ordenes.’ He clicked his heels.

  Forester blinked his eyes, endeavouring to simulate sleepiness. ‘Colonel who?’ he mumbled.

  The colonel sat behind the desk. ‘Coello,’ he said pleasantly. ‘I am the commandant of this fighter squadron.’

  ‘It’s the damnedest thing,’ said Forester with a baffled look. ‘One minute I was in hospital, and the next minute I’m in this office. Familiar surroundings, too; I woke up and became interested in those Sabres.’

  ‘You have flown?’ asked Coello politely.

  ‘I sure have,’ said Forester. ‘I was in Korea—I flew Sabres there.’

  ‘Then we can talk together as comrades,’ said Coello heartily. ‘You remember Doctor McGruder?’

  ‘Not much,’ said Forester. ‘I woke up and he pumped me full of stuff to put me to sleep again—then I found myself here. Say, shouldn’t I be in hospital or something?’

  ‘Then you did not talk to McGruder about anything—anything at all?’

  ‘I didn’t have the chance,’ said Forester. He did not want to implicate McGruder in this. ‘Say, Colonel, am I glad to see you. All hell is breaking loose on the other side of the mountains. There’s a bunch of bandits trying to murder some stranded airline passengers. We were on our way here to tell you.’

  ‘On your way here?’

  That’s right; there was a South American guy told us to come here—now, what was his name?’ Forester wrinkled his brow.

  ‘Aguillar—perhaps?’

  ‘Never heard that name before,’ said Forester. ‘No, this guy was called Montes.’

  ‘And Montes told you to come here?’ said Coello incredulously. ‘He must have thought that fool Rodriguez was here. You were two days too late, Mr Forester.’ He began to laugh.

  Forester felt a cold chill run through him but pressed on with his act of innocence. ‘What’s so funny?’ he asked plaintively. ‘Why the hell are you sitting there laughing instead of doing something about it?’

  Coello wiped the tears of laughter from his eyes. ‘Do not worry, Señor Forester; we know all about it already. We are making preparations for…er…a rescue attempt.’

  I’ll bet you are, thought Forester bitterly, looking at the Sabres drawn up on the apron. He said, ‘What the hell! Then I nearly killed myself on the mountain for nothing. What a damned fool I am.’

  Coello opened a folder on his desk. ‘Your name is Raymond Forester; you are South American Sales Manager for the Fairfield Machine Tool Corporation, and you were on your way to Santillana.’ He smiled as he looked down at the folder. ‘We have checked, of course; there is a Raymond Forester who works for this company, and he is sales manager in South America. The C.I.A. can be efficient in small matters, Mr Forester.’

  ‘Huh!’ said Forester. ‘C.I.A.? What the devil are you talking about?’

  Coello waved his hand airily. ‘Espionage! Sabotage! Corruption of public officials! Undermining the will of the people! Name anything bad and you name the C.I.A.—and also yourself, Mr Forester.’

  ‘You’re nuts,’ said Forester disgustedly.

  ‘You are a meddling American,’ said Coello sharply. ‘You are a plutocratic, capitalistic lackey. One could forgive you if you were but a tool; but you do your filthy work in full awareness of its evil. You came to Cordillera to foment an imperialistic revolution, putting up that scoundrel Aguillar as a figurehead for your machinations.’

  ‘Who?’ said Forester. ‘You’re still nuts.’

  ‘Give up, Forester; stop this pretence. We know all about the Fairfield Machine Tool Corporation. It is a cover that capitalistic Wall Street has erected to hide your imperialistic American secret service. We know all about you and we know all about Addison in Santillana. He has been removed from the game—and so have you, Forester.’

  Forester smiled crookedly. ‘The voice is Spanish-American, but the words come from Moscow—or is it Peking this time?’ He nodded towards the armed aircraft. ‘Who is really doing the meddling round here?’

  Coello smiled. ‘I am a servant of the present government of General Lopez. I am sure he would be happy to know that Aguillar will soon be dead.’

  ‘But I bet you won’t tell him,’ said Forester. ‘Not if I know how you boys operate. You’ll use the threat of Aguillar to drive Lopez out as soon as it suits you.’ He tried to scratch his itching chest but was unsuccessful. ‘You jumped me and Rohde pretty fast—how did you know we were at McGruder’s hospital?’

  ‘I am sure you are trying to sound more stupid than you really are,’ said Coello. ‘My dear Forester, we are in radio communication with our forces on the other side of the mountains.’ He sounded suddenly bitter. ‘Inefficient though they are, they have at least kept their radio working. You were seen by the bridge. And when men come over that pass, do you think the news can be kept quiet? The whole of Altemiros knows of the mad American who has done the impossible.’

  But they don’t know why I did it, thought Forester savagely; and they’ll never find out if this bastard has his way.

  Coello held up a photograph. ‘We suspected that the C.I.A. might have someone with Aguillar. It was only a suspicion then, but now we know it to be a fact. This photograph was taken in Washington six months ago.’

  He skimmed it over and Forester looked at it. It was a glossy picture of himself and his immediate superior talking together on the steps of a building. He flicked the photograph with his fingernail. ‘Processed in Moscow?’

  Coello smiled and asked silkily, ‘Can you give me any sound reasons why you should not be shot?’

  ‘Not many,’ said Forester off-handedly. ‘But enough.’ He propped himself up on one elbow and tried to make it sound good. ‘You’re killing Americans on the other side of those mountains, Coello. The American government is going to demand an explanation—an investigation.’

  ‘So? There is an air crash—there have been many such crashes even in North America. Especially can they occur on such ill-run air lines as Andes Airlift, which, incidentally, is owned by one of your own countrymen. An obsolete aircraft with a drunken pilot—what more natu
ral? There will be no bodies to send back to the United States, I assure you. Regrettable, isn’t it?’

  ‘You don’t know the facts of life,’ said Forester. ‘My government is going to be very interested. Now, don’t get me wrong; they’re not interested in air crashes as such. But I was in that airplane and they’re going to be goddam suspicious. There’ll be an official investigation—Uncle Sam will goose the I.A.T.A. into making one—and there’ll be a concurrent undercover investigation. This country will be full of operatives within a week—you can’t stop them all and you can’t hide all the evidence. The truth is going to come out and the U.S. government will be delighted to blow the lid off. Nothing would please them more.’

  He coughed, sweating a little—now it had to sound really good. ‘Now, there’s a way round all that.’ He sat up on the stretcher. ‘Have you a cigarette?’

  Coello’s eyes narrowed as he picked up a cigarette-box from the desk and walked round to the stretcher. He offered the open box and said, ‘Am I to understand that you’re trying to bargain for your life?’

  ‘You’re dead right,’ said Forester. He put a whine in his voice. ‘I’ve no hankering to wear a wooden overcoat, and I know how you boys operate on captured prisoners.’

  Thoughtfully Coello flicked his lighter and lit Forester’s cigarette. ‘Well?’

  Forester said, ‘Look, Colonel; supposing I was the only survivor of that crash—thrown clear by some miraculous chance. Then I could say that the crash was okay; that it was on the up-and-up. Why wouldn’t they believe me? I’m one of their bright boys.’

  Coello nodded. ‘You are bright.’ He smiled. ‘What guarantee have we that you will do this for us?’

  ‘Guarantee? You know damn well I can’t give you one. But I tell you this, buddy-boy; you’re not the boss round here—not by a long shot. And I’m stuffed full of information about the C.I.A.—operation areas, names, faces, addresses, covers—you ask for it, I’ve got it. And if your boss ever finds out that you’ve turned down a chance like this you’re going to be in trouble. What have you got to lose? All you have to do is to put it to your boss and let him say “yes” or “no”. If anything goes wrong he’ll have to take the rap from higher up, but you’ll be in the clear.’