by Jack Higgins
When we finally made camp in the ruins of an old rancheria in the late evening, I collapsed on the ground and crawled into the shelter of a broken adobe wall the moment the trooper who had been leading me released the rope.
We had covered something like thirty miles and there were another twenty to go. I opened my eyes wearily and found van Horne beside me.
‘I’m getting old, Keogh, that’s what it is.’ His face looked grey and drawn and yet he still managed to smile. ‘You want to know something? I’ve decided I don’t like our friend one little bit.’
Three separate fires were lit, the men scavenging for wood in a nearby thicket and soon I could smell coffee and bacon on the damp air.
After a while the girl appeared, holding a tin mug of coffee in one hand, a pan containing a couple of frijoles in the other. Cordona arrived on the run and kicked the mug from her hand, catching her wrist and really hurting her.
‘I said no food for these two, damn you,’ he said and then hesitated, obviously considerably put out at the sight of the pain in her face.
‘Does that make you feel better, sonny?’ van Horne asked him.
Cordona turned, a fist raised, restraining himself only with the greatest difficulty, then grabbed the girl by the arm and pushed her back towards the fire.
The rain increased and so did our misery as darkness fell. Several of the troopers glanced towards us as we crouched there in the heavy rain. Cordona ignored us. Simply sat at his own small fire chain-smoking and drinking cup after cup of coffee.
Finally the girl Victoria got up very deliberately, picked up two horse blankets and came towards us. She gave one to van Horne, then crouched beside me and spread the other one around both of us. Men glanced furtively at Cordona, then at each other. I could hear the whispering and yet he made no sign, staring straight ahead of him, too proud to provoke an incident.
I was shaking like a leaf, my teeth chattering, but already I was beginning to warm up, the girl’s body pressed against me. When the shaking continued, she pulled my face down into her shoulders and drew the blanket over my head, rocking gently to and fro. I forgot her age then, forgot her background as my eyes started to close in sleep. She was just a woman doing the right thing at the right time and all women, after all, are born old and knowing most things.
It stopped raining during the night and the following day dawned to a sky of cloudless blue, the sun starting its climb early. By mid-morning it was so hot that all moisture had been sucked out of that barren land again and dust rose in a great cloud stirred by the horses’ hooves.
Van Horne and I marched in the thick of it which didn’t make breathing any easier and the heat was unbearable. By the time we were ready for the noonday halt, I was at the end of my tether and beyond. I had fallen so many times that the column had to be halted constantly and even Cordona had raised no objection when I was given water.
I’d existed in my own small world of suffering and had been unaware of how van Horne was managing. When I finally opened my eyes and found him lying beside me at the noonday camp, he seemed in no better case than I was myself.
‘I’ve decided to live, just to spite this guy,’ he croaked faintly. ‘A small victory, but mine own.’
I rolled over on my back, my whole body on fire, and found Victoria kneeling over me with a canteen of water. She looked frightened and yet angry at the same time. I tried a smile, but my lips were cracking and it hurt.
She poured a little water into my mouth, then bathed my face. Cordona walked across from the fire, a mug of coffee in one hand and stood looking down at us.
‘Satisfied?’ van Horne croaked. ‘Or were we supposed to die?’
Cordona turned away and went back to the fire. Yet he still wouldn’t give in. When we resumed the journey, I was carried to one of the mules and my wrists looped over the high wooden pommel of a pack saddle. It meant that I couldn’t fall down any more which was something, but I still had to walk.
Van Horne was undergoing the same treatment a few yards in front of me and this was the manner in which we covered the final miles into Huila, although in my case it was simply a matter of hanging on, for my toes seemed to be trailing most of the time.
I have no clear memory of entering Huila itself, only of surfacing to a bucket of water in the face and finding myself on my back, Cordona leaning over me.
‘All right, Keogh, pull yourself together,’ he said. ‘You’re here.’
A couple of soldiers dragged me to my feet and we started across a courtyard. Van Horne was ahead of me, also supported by two soldiers and we went in through a large oaken door to a smell that said I was back in prison again.
The cell was no better than a sewer which was, I suppose, the intention. Even that wasn’t enough for Cordona and he had them place us in leg-irons before leaving. I was past caring and as the door clanged shut, plunged into blissful, easeful dark.
I must have slept for sixteen or seventeen hours after that. I can remember waking a couple of times to relieve myself and finding van Horne snoring in the corner and on each occasion, plunged into a deep sleep again by the simple expedient of closing my eyes.
When I finally awakened, it was late afternoon of the following day and van Horne was standing by the small, barred window of the cell looking out.
He turned with a smile. ‘How do you feel?’
‘Terrible.’ I put a hand to my belly which felt as if there was a hole in it. ‘Is there anything to eat around here?’
‘You’ll find a pan of slops in the corner with so many maggots in it I lost count. I’m waiting for your girlfriend.’
‘Victoria.’ I got up and groaned involuntarily at the stiffness in my limbs. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘She was here at the window earlier so I slipped her a fifty-peso note I had in my shoe to go and get us a few things.’ He grunted suddenly. ‘Here she comes now.’
I peered through the bars into a small courtyard with a fountain in the centre. There didn’t seem to be anyone about and the gate to the street outside stood open.
Victoria looked up at me, her face grave and anxious. I said softly, ‘You shouldn’t be doing this.’
She smiled and started to pass things through the bars one by one. A bottle of wine, bread, olives, a couple of long sausages and two packets of Artistas and matches.
‘Good appetite, my friends.’ Colonel Bonilla stepped out of the shadows of an archway to the right of us.
‘Don’t take it out on the girl, Bonilla,’ I said as he approached. ‘She was only trying to help.’
She looked up at him anxiously. He patted her on the head and said, ‘On your way, child, and stay out of trouble.’
To my amazement, she smiled for him, fleetingly and yet it was there, and smiled again for me before hurrying away.
Bonilla said, ‘Yes, my friends, it is always wise to eat well when you can for in this life, one can never be certain if one will ever be able to eat again.’
On which pleasant note he left us to eat and disappeared in the shadows of the archway.
5
My father, a dedicated Fenian till the day he died of tuberculosis in an English prison, left me to the care of my grandfather, Mickeen Bawn Keogh of Stradballa in the County of Kerry.
Now it must be understood that Mickeen Bawn means small white Michael, a description that never made much sense to me, for although his hair had been snow white since boyhood, he was six and a half feet tall. A gentle giant of a man except with the drink taken. In that state, I have seen half a dozen hard men of their hands run from him for in his youth he had been, amongst other things, a prizefighter.
So, I was raised on a Kerry farm along with the best horses in Ireland, which is to say the world and nothing else life has to offer could ever match up to those days. Back country so quiet you could hear a dog barking in the next county. Sweet-smelling mornings and sunsets to thank God for. No beginning, no end, time a circle until the day my grandfather decided I had b
rains and sent me to the Jesuits at Knockbree to be made into a scholar and perhaps even a gentleman.
When I was accepted by the College of Surgeons, went up to the University, there was no prouder man and yet each of us is what he is from the day he is born and no escaping. I went to Dublin town to learn something of the art of healing and met a man called Michael Collins who found another use for me.
After the Easter Rising, I went back to the University on his orders and bided my time. Stayed there during the years that followed. A medical student by day, which was as good a front as you could find and a member of the Squad in my spare time. Emmet Oge Keogh – little Edmund Keogh. His strong left hand, he used to call me, and God knows, I killed for him often enough in those days or for Ireland, whichever way you care to look at it.
Some of these things I spoke of to van Horne during the first three days after our capture. The fact is I found that I rather liked the man for he reminded me pleasantly of my grandfather. In any case, there was little else to do except talk for we were given no work, no exercise of any description during those first few days.
We were even reduced to eating the slops provided once a day in an old enamel bucket at noon for there were no more visits from Victoria with supplies from the town. After that first evening when Bonilla had appeared, there was a guard posted outside the window.
Three days we had of it and that was three days too much with tempers starting to fray. I remember van Horne standing at the window, just before dark, trying to get a little air, suddenly turning in a kind of irritation, looking for someone to kick at.
‘They tell me you never had more than ten thousand men under arms against the English at any one time. What was wrong with the rest of the country?’
He was trying to bait me for some reason of his own, I knew that, but I would not be drawn. ‘We didn’t have the arms for more.’
‘Come off it, Keogh.’ He laughed harshly and wiped the sweat from his face with an old rag. ‘I think guys like you, the ones who turned out, did it because you got a bang out of killing people. You enjoyed it, the whole thing. A game for schoolboys playing with real guns.’
‘You could be right there,’ I said cheerfully, taking the last cigarette from my crumpled packet of Artistas.
He was annoyed and said sourly, ‘Didn’t I read somewhere that there was so much shooting in the back going on they had to introduce a law making it compulsory for any man passing a policeman on the street to raise his hands in the air?’
‘I believe that was so in some areas.’
‘I just bet it was.’ By now, he was thoroughly irritated. ‘How many did you see off then, Keogh, for the sake of your bloody cause?’
‘Why, as many as was needed, Mr van Horne,’ I told him evenly.
He stood there staring at me, really angry like some great sullen bull getting ready to charge. What would have happened next is debatable, but the course of action was chosen for us as a key rattled in the lock.
Lieutenant Cordona entered, spic and span in a freshly pressed khaki drill uniform, highly polished boots glistening in the dim light.
‘Well, damn me if it isn’t the soldier,’ van Horne said. ‘Don’t tell me we’re going to get some service at last.’
‘You will get more than that, I assure you,’ Cordona replied and motioned us outside.
He took us out through the courtyard between half a dozen soldiers, leg-irons rattling on the cobbles. We went through an archway into a cloistered patio and finally entered a small, enclosed garden. There was a fountain, a flame tree vivid with blossom and Bonilla taking his ease in a wicker chair on the terrace.
Like Cordona he wore a well-tailored uniform and highly polished boots and looked very correct, very military. He told Cordona to bring us inside, got to his feet and led the way in through open french windows.
The room was sparsely furnished and was obviously used as his office. There was a desk and chair, various large-scale maps of the area on the wall, a narrow iron cot in one corner and not much else.
He sat down behind the desk and put a cigar in his mouth which Cordona lit for him. He leaned back in his chair, looked at us both for a reasonably lengthy interval and then spoke.
‘Yes, in many ways you couldn’t be more complementary to each other. It is really quite remarkable. Two rogues together.’
‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that,’ van Horne said.
‘Wouldn’t you, father? You don’t mind if I still call you that, do you?’
‘You can call me what you damn well please,’ van Horne told him cheerfully.
‘Which gives me something of a choice. Murderer? Yes, many times over. Thief?’ Bonilla turned to me. ‘Would you believe me, Señor Keogh, if I told you he would cut the fingers off a dead man to get at his rings? Totally without scruple or pity. In at least two states in the United States he faces the death sentence.’
‘Pecks’ Bad Boy, that’s me,’ van Horne said. ‘So what?’
‘And in excellent company, father, I assure you. I have here a most interesting communication from Mexico City from the representative of the Irish Free State. This Emmet Keogh is a very dangerous man. An Irish gunman, he was for several years a member of what was known as the Squad. An organization used by the Irish patriotic leader, Michael Collins, as chief weapon in the campaign of deliberate terrorism he waged against the English. Señor Keogh has killed so many men he has lost count.’
‘For what it’s worth, I was a soldier of the Irish Republican Army,’ I said.
‘How noble. Were you fighting for Ireland when you were trouble-shooter for the Hermosa Mining Company, señor? How many men did you kill in the disturbances up there? Four, or was it five?’
‘They’d hung a priest as you damn well know,’ I told him. ‘I was doing what I was paid for.’
He ignored me completely. ‘Yes, a dangerous man, Señor Keogh, a fanatic. Not content with getting rid of the English, he and his friends turned on their own leaders, plunged their country into civil war of the worst kind. As a matter of interest, the Irish Government are anxious to have you back, but only to face a firing squad. The statement I have received from them particularly refers to an affair in the town of Drumdoon four months ago when you ambushed a vehicle in which four high-ranking Free State officers were travelling and killed them all.’
The heart seemed to stop inside of me, the throat dry as what I had tried to keep down all this long while forced its way to the surface.
‘One of them was your elder brother, I understand. Colonel Sean Keogh.’
I was aware of van Horne’s startled glance, swayed forward and grabbed at the edge of the desk as the walls undulated. ‘You go to hell, you bastard,’ I told Bonilla.
‘Your own destination, my friend. You and the good father here were both sentenced to death by a military court this afternoon. You will be shot in the morning.’
He stood up and walked out without a word and I stayed, leaning heavily on the edge of the desk, fighting for air.
There was a hand under my elbow. Van Horne said quietly, ‘Are you all right? Can you make it?’
‘No sympathy,’ I said.
‘That word doesn’t figure in my vocabulary.’ As I turned to look at him, the craggy, used-up face broke into a smile that was like no smile I’d seen on top of earth. Courage and strength. Genuine strength and infinite compassion.
‘We will go now, señores,’ I heard Cordona say, polite for the first time and only because we were dead men walking.
Van Horne said softly, ‘You will walk out of here on your own two feet and smile. Do you understand me, boy?’
My grandfather all over again, but he was right and let it be so. I would not disgrace my name this night or any other. I took a deep breath to steady myself and went through the french windows ahead of them all.
It was cold in the cell, bitterly cold and the stench of the place seemed worse than ever after our brief visit to the outside world. I stood at the window, starin
g into the night. After a while, the key rattled in the lock again, the door opened and Cordona reappeared with a couple of packets of Artistas and a straw-covered bottle of tequila. He put them down on the floor and went out without a word.
Van Horne said, ‘Well, I’ll be damned, even that bastard has a heart. Here, take a pull at this.’
He passed me the tequila bottle. As I have said, I never did care for the stuff, but it was warming if nothing else. I took a couple of swallows and gave it back to him.
He said, ‘Do you want to talk about it?’
Now here is a strange thing. I had known him play-acting the priest, I had seen him as another kind of man entirely after the shooting at Tacho’s, but this calm, worldly-wise, compassionate man was someone else again. Even the manner of speech had altered.
‘How many different people are you, for God’s sake?’ I demanded.
‘Oh, it amuses me to confuse people, but that isn’t answering my question.’
‘All right,’ I said. ‘But it’s soon told. My brother was six years older than me. He joined the Dublin Fusiliers in 1914, and went to fight England’s wars for her, a habit Irishmen find hard to break. He was commissioned in the field, invalided out as a captain at the beginning of 1918.’
‘Were his politics the same colour as yours?’
‘I think you could say that. He rose to command a Flying Column in spite of his bad right leg. We parted company over the treaty with the English. He was one of those, like Collins, who thought we’d suffered enough. That half a loaf was better than nothing.’
‘And you were a die-hard Republican.’
I couldn’t see his face so dark had it become which was perhaps a good thing. I said, ‘I didn’t know he was in the car that day in Drumdoon. We were expecting the divisional commander.’