‘I have met Senor Garcia, Colonel,’ Diaz said. ‘As you seem unable to confine him in those mountains. Or arrest him when he comes out of them, I have not seen him today.’
‘I have a warrant,’ Lumbrera said. ‘Empowering me to search any premises I feel may be suspicious.’
‘You would not dare, ’ Carlotta Diaz said. ‘My house?’
‘Alas, senora … ’
‘Oh, let him search, my dear,’ Diaz said. ‘Call in your men, Colonel. I am sure you will not mind if we continue with our meal while you prowl around. I shall of course sue the government for any damage done to my property.’
Lumbrera gave him another of his sleepy stares. Then smiled. ‘As you say, Dona Carlotta, I would not dare. I had but hoped, that situated where you are, you might have noticed something that may have helped me to keep the peace in Santiago Province.’
‘Well, we have noticed nothing,’ Diaz told him.
‘Then I will take my leave, and allow you to enjoy your meal.’ Lumbrera turned to the door, which Salvador was still pointedly holding open, and then turned back again. ‘I would have supposed, and hoped, Don Arnaldo, that you, and your family, would have been more anxious than any other in Cuba to exterminate these wretches who seek to rebel against the glory of Spain. In view of the past.’
‘The past is the past, Colonel.’
‘And yet, the past dictates the present, does it not? And even more, the future. When I look at this thriving plantation, and remember how government troops were once forced to take this building by assault … your father was very fortunate to be pardoned, senor.’
‘My father was pardoned because he was already a dying man,’ Diaz said.
‘And because his name was Roberto Diaz de Obrigar,’ Rafael said, unable to keep silent any longer.
Lumbrera nodded. ‘The richest planter in Cuba,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘It is good to be so well respected. But not all were so fortunate. And when I remember the poor senora’s father … ’
‘My father died in a mistaken cause,’ Carlotta Diaz snapped.
‘He was a hero,’ Lumbrera said sadly. ‘But yours, Senor Lisle … ’
‘Was placed against a wall, without reason, Colonel,’ Lisle said evenly. ‘An act of injustice for which Spain paid dearly.’
‘But yet he is dead. And you are here, dreaming of revenge, eh?’
‘All things come to he who waits, Colonel.’
‘All things,’ Lumbrera agreed, and looked at Rafael. ‘Can you remember those things of which we speak, boy?’
‘I can remember,’ Rafael said.
‘But you were not here.’
‘I can still remember,’ Rafael insisted. ‘And I look forward to the day when all wrongs will be righted.’
Both Arnaldo and Carlotta Diaz caught their breaths. But Lumbrera merely smiled. ‘You dream of equalling the deeds of your grandfather, perhaps. Your father is more sensible.’ Arnaldo bit his lip, and glanced at his wife. ‘He was not here either, Colonel,’ Carlotta said. ‘But as you say, he is more sensible. Our supper is getting cold.’
Lumbrera stood to attention. ‘Then I shall leave you to enjoy it. Again, my apologies for intruding upon your privacy. When next we meet, it may be in more mutually congenial circumstances.’ His gaze swept the room. ‘You should know,’ he said, ‘that there will be no more pardons. Not even for the richest planter in Cuba.’ He gazed at Rafael. ‘Or his son.’ He saluted, and left the room.
Salvador closed the door. ‘I am sorry, senor, but he would not be refused.’
‘I quite understand, Salvador,’ Diaz said. ‘It is not possible to resist a posse of policemen, at least peaceably. That Lumbrera is an uncouth rascal.’ He listened to the hooves drumming on the drive as the patrol rode off. ‘But he has failed again.’
‘You think so?’ Carlotta demanded. ‘Does he not know? ’
Diaz looked at Lisle.
Who sighed. ‘I would say he knows, Don Arnaldo. It may be instinct, or just suspicion, in view of your father’s involvement with the revolution, or it may be that he has been given information … but if he was out on the road this evening, and saw the sloop leave, he will know that those guns cannot have been carried very far.’
‘Supposing he knows they were guns,’ Diaz argued.
‘He will certainly suppose they were guns,’ Lisle pointed out.
‘My God,’ Carlotta said. ‘What will he do?’
‘He can do nothing, until he can find some proof, Dona Carlotta. And he can hardly dig up the whole plantation. He will wait, and watch, and seek more information.’
‘My people will never betray me,’ Diaz declared.
‘I would not care to bet my life on that, Don Arnaldo.’
‘You mean you are going to leave me?’
Lisle looked at Christina. ‘No, sir. I came to Cuba with a purpose, and I will see it out, if all I can do is take that scoundrel Lumbrera with me. But I think it would be a fine idea for the senora, and the senorita, and Rafael, to take an extended holiday. Visit Europe, perhaps.’
‘Leave Cuba?’ Carlotta demanded. ‘Never. I will not let that rascal drive me from my home. Never! I went once before, and have regretted it ever since.’
Lisle shrugged. ‘Well, then, the children … ’
‘We are not children,’ Christina declared, angrily.
‘Lumbrera, not even Lumbrera, would ever attempt to arrest gentlewomen,’ Diaz asserted. ‘Especially a Vasquez like Carlotta, or her daughter. No, no, even if he managed to find the evidence to arrest me tomorrow, they would never be harmed. Of this I am sure; the public, the Governor-General himself, would never stand for it. There is still such a thing as honour and decency in Cuba.’
‘Then I have no more advice to give,’ Lisle said. ‘Except that we must be very circumspect for the next few months.’
‘I thought the colonel looked rather a nice little man,’ Christina remarked. ‘It is hard to imagine him hurting anybody.’
‘Ha,’ her father commented.
‘He is a scorpion,’ Carlotta said vehemently, ‘who delights in stinging. But who one day will be stamped out of existence. And as your father says, my dear, he will never dare attempt to harm you.’
‘It is Rafael who must go away for a while,’ Diaz announced.
‘Me?’ Rafael cried. ‘Why me?’
‘Because you are in the most danger. You are too hot headed. Did you not see how Lumbrera looked at you when you spoke so rashly? He has you marked, now, as a possible victim. He can, and will, make your life a misery, whenever you leave the plantation, and with every hope that you will lose your temper and give him the opportunity he desires. If he were ever to discover a reason to arrest you, and have you down in those cells of his, even for one night … ’
‘Do you not suppose I can stand being arrested, Father?’
‘It would be the end of everything,’ Arnaldo Diaz told him.
‘You think I would betray you, where you trust your peons,’ Rafael said bitterly.
‘I know that I would betray myself, were I ever to fall into Lumbrera’s hands,’ Diaz said. ‘Do not suppose there is a man on earth able to resist the tortures that man has devised. He would have you denying your own mother within an hour.’
‘I will not go,’ Rafael declared. ‘My place is here, with you. I will not be sent away.’ His tone contained more than an element of reproach; he knew how his grandfather had sent his father, and his mother, and himself, to England at the beginning of the revolution, to keep them safe; he had not understood why his father, a grown man and an ardent supporter of the Cuban cause, had agreed to go.
‘You will do as you are told,’ his father reminded him. ‘Besides, I have a mission for you to undertake. You will go to the United States, not England, this time. That is not so far, eh? You know many of our people are there, and in particular, Marti. I would have you speak with him, and acquaint him of the latest situation here, and discover something of his plans.’
‘Invaluable service,’ his father assured him. ‘But where would he go, to live?’ Carlotta asked, her mothering instincts asserting themselves. ‘He cannot just go to America, by himself, without a friend in the world.’ ‘Friend? Of course we have friends.’
‘He must not go to stay with any Cuban refugee,’ Carlotta insisted.
‘Now, Mother … ’
‘Next thing they would be involving you in some madcap scheme to assassinate General Blanco. I will not have that. You must go to someone responsible.’
‘You treat me like a child,’ Rafael grumbled. ‘I am twenty-one years old.’
‘Let me see … ’ Arnaldo snapped his fingers. ‘The McGanns!’
Carlotta frowned. The McGanns were fine people, no doubt, but really of common stock.
Her husband understood her expression. ‘They are friends,’ he said. ‘Good friends. Jerry McGann in particular was a great help to my father immediately after the revolution. They will welcome Rafael for a visit with open arms. And they are sober, sensible people. Long Island,’ he told his son. ‘One of the most beautiful parts of the United States. You will enjoy it there. I do not suppose you remember Jerry McGann?’
‘A very large man,’ Christina put in, unexpectedly.
‘Why, yes, so he was. All the family are large. Six feet is short to them. Naval people. There has been a McGann in the United States Navy since it was founded, and that is more than a hundred years ago. You will like the McGanns. And they will like you. And you will be carrying out a mission of vital importance to our cause.’
‘And you will come back speaking with an American accent,’ Christina smiled.
‘You will leave tomorrow,’ Arnaldo Diaz decided. ‘I will give you a letter to Jerry McGann. And a message for Marti,’ he added.
Chapter 2
Long Island — 1893
‘Farm’s the other side of that copse,’ remarked the driver of the horse-drawn cab. ‘Stretches all the way down to the Sound. Wealthy people, the McGanns.’
Rafael Diaz was glad to hear that. His doubts about undertaking this journey, which could so easily be described as a flight, had increased with every moment since his father had commanded it. Because Father doubted his courage, if confronted by Juan Lumbrera, on ground of the policeman’s choosing. That was an insult, really. Father was but expiating his own guilt.
Rafael had been born in 1872, the year before the Cubans had begun their War of Independence against Spain. He had no memory of leaving Santiago; life for him had commenced in the English manor house Arnaldo Diaz had rented, in the county of Surrey, some miles from London. Christina had been born in that house, and life had pursued a very even, luxurious course; his father had been no penniless refugee, but rather had had the disposition of all the Diaz millions, carefully invested in Europe, that were not needed for the cause.
Yet Rafael had, from his first coherent thought, been aware of his father’s unhappiness and misery, at the concept that he should be in safety while others, his friends and even his own father, were risking their lives for the freedom of which every Cuban dreamed. He had even attempted to explain it to the boy; to explain the terrible position his mother would have been in had they remained, tom between the two families to whom she owed allegiance; about his role as paymaster for the revolutionary army, a vital one, he had claimed … while Rafael had dreamed only of going home. He had been twelve years old before he had seen his home again, by which time he had been turned into a proper little English gentleman, and then he had returned to a ruin and a ruinous memory. And doubts about the courage of his own father, who had so willingly allowed himself to be banished thousands of miles from the scene of death or glory.
But then, there had to be doubts about Grandfather, too, who had, from all accounts, been a prominent rebel, and yet had been pardoned. Grandfather Vasquez, his mother’s father, had been killed in the field, fighting, despite his age, for the loyalist forces as a volunteer. So, he had doubts about his mother as well, doubts as to how firmly she would welcome the next revolution, when it came, as come it must — despite her apparently staunch support of her husband in all things.
As for Jack Lisle’s father, that was an even more strange business, of which he had never satisfactorily got to the bottom. But Lisle had come to Cuba to work for his father, officially, really to work for the overthrow of the Spaniards — the Englishman had had to learn about sugar planting. A burden Arnaldo Diaz seemed prepared to take upon his shoulders, even if he was hurrying very slowly, keeping men like Pedro Garcia at arm’s length, accumulating weapons at a snail’s pace, remaining as friendly as possible with the Spanish establishment, of which he was part himself, as Carlotta’s husband, but certainly supplying arms and ammunition to the men who maintained a rebellious stance in the mountains behind the plantation, and who, in the eyes of the law, were little more than bandits. It was a strange situation. But one which Rafael was sure would one day come to fruition. In his absence?
That he was determined should never happen. Yet he had obeyed his father. It was his nature to do so, and besides, if he could indeed manage to meet Josef Marti, the young poet who was inspiring his countrymen, from the safety of an American exile, to be sure, to resist the tyranny of Spain, it would be a great honour, and might even lead to brilliant things. But to begin by appearing before these American seafaring people, almost like a supplicant, cap in hand … that went against the grain.
On the other hand, if they were wealthy …
Of course, one man’s wealth was another man’s poverty. He doubted there was a real wealth, individual wealth, to be found in America. There were none of the obvious evidences of personal power, such as could be observed on a Cuban sugar plantation, no gangs of weary peons trekking off into the fields, no huge factory, no arrogant overseers. But then, he had discovered little to relate America to Cuba, since landing in New York the previous week. Yet his father had always claimed that the American people were wholeheartedly behind Cuban aspirations for independence. Had they not themselves fought for their independence, against the British, some a hundred and twenty years earlier?
Mother had always been sceptical about that. If she had chosen to side with her husband against her family, she had yet retained many loyalist opinions. ‘They want Cuba for themselves,’ she had said.
‘The Americans?’ Arnaldo Diaz had scoffed. ‘They seek no empire. When have they sought empire?’
‘They have been creating an empire since the day of their independence,’ Carlotta had retorted. ‘They have slowly conquered every inch of North America that they could lay hands on. Now that is complete, and they are looking elsewhere. Oh, they will do it tongue in cheek, in the guise of liberating us from Spain. But they will do it.’
That remained to be seen. Rafael had no more intention of being ruled by an American than by a Spaniard, for the rest of his life. Thus he was determined not to be hoodwinked by these husky, red-faced, ex-Irishmen or Scotsmen or Englishmen or Germans or Swedes or Dutch. Or impressed by their strength — of which he had observed very little on his journey from the city. Prosperity, yes, of a very level kind; he had seen no people as poor as the peons who worked his father’s plantation. Freedom, yes; the meanest claimed the right to look a gentleman in the eye, and even sit beside him on the train were there a seat available. Surely that was carrying freedom a shade too far; he could not imagine it ever happening in Cuba, even when the Spanish had been thrown out — nor did he want to see it happen. But he had not actually seen any man in uniform, save for the odd very peaceful-looking policeman. It was not possible to walk the streets of Havana, for instance, without seeing almost as many uniforms as civilian clothes. Was there no garrison holding New York?
Out here on Long Island there were not even any policemen. And the prosperity had a rustic look. The McGann house, now looming through the trees, was in fact a fine coun
try mansion. Father had told him it had recently been rebuilt from the somewhat ramshackle house which had grown out of the famous Harry McGann’s original log cabin. Harry McGann had been the founder of this remarkable family, apparently, an Irish rebel who had fled to America before the outbreak of the War of the Revolution, and in that war had earned himself fame and fortune, and set his family upon the path they had followed ever since, the eldest son always into the navy, the rest to farm this extensive acreage; to his right a considerable herd of dairy cattle could be seen munching the lush, thick grass. So they had arrived at the threshold of being gentlemen, Rafael supposed, and the house, with its two storeys and its neat verandahs, and flower beds which surrounded it, looked comfortably lived in — but it was built of wood. Rafael scratched his head in amazement. The building looked totally indefensible, so far as he could see. He doubted the walls would keep out a bullet, while of course it could be burned by any attacking force with the greatest of ease.
There was not even a peon about to act as a guard and warn the farmers that a stranger might be about. Instead the pony and trap rolled to a halt before the wide front steps, and the cabbie descended from his perch to lift down the box. ‘Here we are, my friend,’ he said. He was a dashedly familiar fellow, in Rafael’s opinion. ‘That will be four dollars.’
Rafael took out his purse and paid him. ‘But you cannot just leave me,’ he said. ‘There is nobody here.’
‘Oh, there’ll be somebody about. Listen.’ The cabbie hastily got back into his seat, while Rafael looked at the side of the house, from beyond which there came a deep, bell like barking. ‘It’s called Rufus,’ the cabbie told him. ‘Keep still, and he won’t harm you.’
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