by Jon Cleary
“Sister Mary Magdalene. No, I’m not American, I’m a mixture. Irish-Australian.” She didn’t add French: her father, her mother had told her, was dead and best forgotten.
He shook his head, puzzled. “I just don’t know what you’re doing here.” he said and left her wondering the same thing. Doubt is no comfort, no staff: she was suddenly afraid. She took out her beads and began to pray, but she had, too, doubts about the efficacy of prayer.
They kept her in the room for another two days; having abducted her, they didn’t seem to know what to do with her. Several times she heard arguments outside the house; she recognized the voice of the lieutenant, angrier than the other voices. It was cold at night and the one blanket they gave her did not keep her warm. They brought her meals twice a day: chicken, beans and rice; at least they were not going to allow her to starve. The young driver brought the meals, still friendly and concerned for her; but when she asked what had happened to Señor Caracas and the children, the mask came down, he was suddenly Indian. The war, she guessed, had become much more complex than he had been led to believe.
On the second day she stood in front of the closed door, barring his way. “Where am I? I’m in Telgalpa, aren’t I? I heard someone say the name.”
She knew the village, a collection of whitewashed houses, rusting tin sheds and a small pottery factory clinging to the side of a mountain; one wondered why it had been built in such a precarious position and outsiders, coming to it, always looked as if they were in a hurry to depart before the whole lot slid off down into the valley below. A dilapidated church, like one of God’s hovels, stood at the end of the main street, dominating the one flat space in the village, the Plaza di La Señora. The whole village looked on the verge of ruin, yet somehow it had survived earthquakes and, she guessed, it was now surviving the war.
The driver hesitated, then said, “We’ll be going soon, back over the border.”
Here in the mountains the border was only a line on a map, a figment of the cartographers’ imagination. “Are they going to take me with them?”
“I don’t know. Just don’t make the lieutenant angry.”
But the lieutenant didn’t come to see her, not till the third day. Then he opened the door and stood there with a big man in what looked to be army tans and a windbreaker. “Here she is,” the lieutenant said angrily, as if he resented the newcomer’s presence.
“Leave us,” said the big man. He looked around the small room, then said to Mary in English, “Let’s go outside.”
“You can’t do that!” The lieutenant’s anger grew.
The big man looked at him with contempt; or so it seemed to Mary. “Don’t tell me what I can or cannot do, lieutenant,” he said in poor Spanish. He stood in front of the other man and gestured to Mary. “Come along, Sister. Let’s get some light on all this.”
She followed him out of the house and up a dirt path between narrow terraces of corn. They came out on to a terrace where so far nothing had been planted and he gestured to her to sit down on the low stone wall that held up the terrace above it. A laurel tree threw some shade over both of them and she was able to look at him without squinting. On the way up here, after three days of darkness in the house, she had been almost blinded by the bright sun and had stumbled several times.
The big man sat down on the stones beside her and gazed at her steadily for almost a minute. Then he said, “I’m Archbishop Kerry Hourigan, your uncle.”
She felt suddenly faint; she swayed and he put out a hand to steady her. In the two years she had been in Nicaragua she had come to expect the unexpected; but this was beyond her imagination. One’s uncle, one she had never met, did not drop out of a clear blue sky, no matter how closely he might be connected to God. She recovered and told him what she thought.
He smiled. “I’m glad to see you have a sense of humour. That’s the Hourigan in you.” He had no idea who her father was, Brigid had always kept that secret. If he had known, he would not have remarked on it: his opinion of the French in the Vatican was that they had no sense of humour, only malicious wit. “But this isn’t a humorous situation . . . Damn it,” he said, suddenly irritable. “Why are you working in this damned country? They’re Marxists.”
“Not the campesinos, not all of them. I’m not working for the Government, I’m working for the Church.”
“You know what the Holy Father thinks of priests and nuns who work in a Marxist system.”
“Does that include Poland?”
“Poland is different,” he said, realizing he was up against another Hourigan, no matter who her father had been. The Hourigans always had minds of their own: no one knew that better than he. “You’re helping the system here. I’ve heard the reports on you.”
“Reports? Who’s been taking notice of me? I’m not important enough. All I do is teach in my village school and assist the local priest. Sometimes I help the doctor when he comes to visit the village. What are you doing here, anyway? Does the Cardinal in Managua know you’re here? Did he send you to rescue me? Or to tick me off? Is he the one who’s got the reports on me?” She was angry that she might have been spied upon, possibly by old Father Roa.
Kerry Hourigan shook his head. “I’m not supposed to be here. I came in over the border from Honduras—I came here only because of you.” He was lying, but The Lord didn’t punish you if you lied in His cause. If He did, Hell would be fuller than it was. “You’re an embarrassment, my child.”
My child: God, how she hated being addressed like that! The Church seniors always put one down: the father figure gave them some protection. “To you or the Church?”
“Both. Go home, Mary—”
“I don’t have a home, Uncle. I’ve never had one, except the convent.”
“That was your mother’s fault. She should have brought you home to Australia. It’s criminal that you and I have never met till now, that you’ve never met your grandfather.”
“I regret it. I’ve often wondered what you and Grandfather were like—I mean, when I learned who you were. I was sixteen before she told me . . . She only told me after I decided I wanted to be a nun. She never took me back to Australia when she’d go—I’d be left in a boarding school in England or Switzerland.” All at once she was bitter. “Home is my school down in my village, it’s where I’ve been happiest. That’s where I want to go back to.”
“Your mother is back in Australia now.”
“I know. She writes to me every week—I think she’s starting to feel guilty . . .”
He was exasperated with her, yet felt sorry for her. She was not his responsibility, that was her mother’s; yet he was not without a sense of family duty, he was the one here on the spot. He was just not accustomed to taking care of an individual, he had been trained for bigger responsibilities.
He had come to Honduras with Francisco Paredes Canto and Max Domecq Cruz to talk to the local Contra commanders. With the drying up of American supplies, the guerrillas were looking for a new source of arms. He had the money and the contacts, but he had wanted to assure himself that everything he paid for would reach the Contras. His father did not believe in his money, or any part of it, being hijacked. The venture had to be not only successful but secret: there were certain people in the Vatican who would have his head if they knew what he was up to. He was supposed to be in the United States raising money for the Defence Against Subversive Religions.
Yesterday he had heard about the young nun, Sister Mary Magdalene, and he had known at once who she was. The Contra chiefs in Honduras didn’t want her; there had been too much trouble in the past over what had happened to foreign missionaries. They could not leave her fate to the lieutenant in Telgalpa; they knew his reputation. Kerry Hourigan, conscience overcoming his zeal, had volunteered to talk to her, though he had not mentioned his relationship to her.
Now he was regretting his fit of conscience. It was all very well to have a conscience, but, like lust, it should be kept under control.
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��If you go back there, what will you do?”
“The same as I’ve always done. Teach the children.”
“Teach them what? The ways of The Lord or the ways of Karl Marx?”
She laughed: it was a harsh sound coming from such a young throat. “Oh Uncle! When did you last get down to the level of someone like the campesinos?” When did you last hear the confession of an ordinary worker? Or the mother of six or seven kids?”
Oh, how simple-minded were the young. Did they really think only the poor could arouse compassion? None knew better than he the agonizing sins of the rich.
“I’m not a Marxist,” she said. “All I do is listen to their troubles.”
“They have plenty of troubles under the Sandinistas.”
“Are you for the Contras?”
“Yes,” he said almost defiantly. He had no ambition to be a closet martyr; if he was going to sacrifice himself for The Lord, he wouldn’t mind headlines. If Judgement Day should prove to be a low-key occasion, he wouldn’t attend. But, of course, it was easy to be outspoken here in these mountains; secrecy was still necessary back in Rome. He backed off a little, in case, by some chance, she had a line to the Cardinal in Managua, who, he knew, had a line to Rome: “Let’s say I’m against Marxism. It is the evil of the world.”
“I wouldn’t know,” she said simply. The world doesn’t count for much in my village.”
He looked away from her, out over the valley to the opposite ridge. He saw a flash of brilliant green, as if someone had thrown a huge long emerald down into the valley: it was a quetzal, the most beautiful bird in the New World; he had an eye for beauty and it made his heart ache to see it. Then he saw a King vulture drop down out of the sky and alight on the roof beam of the church in the square; he watched it, fascinated by it and repelled. He had seen it in Indian carvings, beautiful yet ugly; somehow it was symbolic of this region. He turned his face away from it, his ear now caught. A big higuera tree stood opposite the church; a boy came out from under its shade carrying a transistor radio turned up full blast; an American voice was belting out a rock-’n’-roll song. The vulture took off from the roof of the church as if its ear, like his own, had been offended; it flapped away on black and white wings till it was just a speck on the far side of the valley. No, he thought, I couldn’t work here, not at her level. He looked back at her.
“You can’t stay here.”
“Here? I don’t want to—I want to go back to my village.”
That wasn’t what he had meant: he had meant here in Nicaragua. The missionaries always finished up on the wrong side if they stayed long enough; they never saw the whole picture. “All right, you can go back to your village.”
She looked almost like a campesino: scuffed and worn boots, a shapeless skirt, an unpressed shirt, short straggly hair that looked as if she had cut it herself. He was a fastidious dresser, something he had inherited from his father, and he detested anyone, even nuns, who didn’t try to keep up appearances.
“Thanks, Uncle. What about you?”
“What about me?”
“Are you coming down to Managua to see the Cardinal?”
“I don’t think President Ortega and his Government would welcome me. No, I’m going back to Rome. I think it would be better if you didn’t mention that I was the one who arranged your release. The Sandinistas might get the wrong impression.”
“About you or me?”
She had no respect for his rank; he wondered what respect she gave to her superiors in the Order. But then she was not family-related to her superiors: perhaps she saw himself and her only as uncle and niece. “Both of us. God bless you, Mary.”
“You too, Uncle.” Then suddenly she smiled and put out her hand. “I’d like to meet you in other circumstances. We could have some ding-dong arguments. Just like you and Mother used to have.”
“God forbid!” But he smiled; in other circumstances he might have come to like her. “Keep up the good work.”
. . . But that was a hypocritical remark if ever I’ve heard one, said the letter to Father Marquez. A month later I got an instruction from the Order in Ireland that I was being transferred to Australia, that I had done more than my fair share of field mission work. Two years! I’ve met nuns and priests who have been in the field for thirty or forty years . . . It was easy to guess who had applied the pressure. Ireland always does what Rome tells it . . .
II
“Here’s the letter.” Clements lifted it out of the murder box. “What do you want done with it? I mean, do you want to show it to the Archbishop?”
“Not yet. The holy bastard has been stringing me along. He said he’d seen her in Honduras, that she’d been brought out of Nicaragua to Tegal—whatever the capital is. He was in Nicaragua—doing what?”
Malone had been dropped outside Homicide by Tewsday’s chauffeur. He had stood on the pavement for a while, wishing he had had his “think walk.” His mind was still muddied. He had more questions to ask, of the Archbishop, of Fingal Hourigan, of Paredes and Domecq, if he could find them. He was not, however, going to go off half-cocked, like a conservationist’s gun.
“Why do I expect Archbishops to be the soul of truth?” said Clements, the non-religious.
The phone rang and Malone picked it up. It was Father Marquez, sounding breathless, as if he had run to the phone at his end. “Inspector? This is Luis Marquez. Holy God, you know—” He paused to get his breath; for a moment Malone thought he had quit and gone. Then he came back, his voice more under control: “I’ve just had another threat. The same guy, Inspector.”
“What did he say?”
“He wanted to know what was in the letter I gave you.”
Malone racked his memory, trying to remember the scene at the cemetery. “You’re sure it was the same man? He spoke to you in Spanish?”
“It was him, all right. He couldn’t have been there, Inspector, I mean at the cemetery. I was scared—I’m even more scared now—and I kept looking around to see who was watching the burial. If he saw us, he must have been some distance away, watching us through glasses. Or someone at the funeral saw me give you the letter and told him.”
That thought had already occurred to Malone. “I’ll check up on that angle.”
“Inspector, I’m really scared. I didn’t want to get into all this. And now . . .”
“Easy, Luis. Where are you—at the University? Do you live alone there?”
“Yes, I have a room here. I eat in the canteen.”
“Can you go and live in some church presbytery, I mean where you’ll have company?”
“I guess so. I can go up to Randwick. If I explain to them . . . But for how long? And I don’t want any of them dragged into this. The parish priest up there is a pretty conservative old stick . . .”
“Do you have to stay at the University for the rest of the day? Yes? Righto, I’ll send a man out to keep you company, then he can escort you up to the presbytery at Randwick. His name is Detective-Constable Graham.”
Malone hung up, then sent for Andy Graham. The latter arrived, as usual all enthusiasm; Malone felt he should have been a football cheer-leader instead of a cop. He was tall and overweight and had a rather vacant, good-looking face behind which a brain was growing that would one day, perhaps too late, be shrewd enough to temper his enthusiasm. Malone explained what he wanted him to do.
“Right!” said Graham and Malone was relieved when he didn’t punch the air. “Let’s hope the bastard shows up, right?”
“Right,” said Malone and hoped the Spanish-speaking bastard would never put in an appearance. “Just stick close to Father Marquez till you leave him at the presbytery this evening. What are you? Catholic?”
“No, a Methodist. The Uniting Church.”
“Don’t get into any argument. Be ecumenical.”
“Right!”
And Andy Graham went off, metaphorically punching the air, the flap of his holster already undone under his jacket. Clements grinned at Malone.
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“He should transfer to the mounted section. He’d have jumped on his horse and galloped all the way to Kensington. I felt like shouting Hi-ho, Silver!”
“We’re getting old, Russ.” Then he looked down the big room and added softly, “We’re just about to get older. Or anyway feel it.”
Chief Superintendent Danforth was lumbering towards them, nodding to the other detectives as he passed them, making a royal progress, though there was nothing regal about him.
“Inspector—” He wheezed down into a chair, both vocally and physically; the chair looked and sounded as if it might collapse beneath him. He might once have been athletic, but that was long ago; he was within a year of retirement and he was wheezing his way towards it, careful not to exert himself. As long as Malone had known him he had been slow-moving and slow-thinking, one of the last of the old school who had risen in the ranks on seniority and not merit. “You’re on this murdered nun case? What’s the progress?”
Malone glanced towards the murder box; Clements had slipped the letter back into it and put the lid on the old shoe-box. “Not much, Chief. You know who’s involved.”
“Oh, indeed I do. Definitely.” Danforth ran a beefy hand over his short-back-and-sides. He was a man from the 1950s: he had stopped still in time. He had once been corrupt, but the new regime had put paid to that; he had had sense enough to realize the gravy train had run off the rails and he had been lucky to escape. “I think you are biting off more than you can chew, Scobie.”
Scobie: that meant this was going to be a man-to-man talk. Malone looked at Clements and the latter took the hint and rose. “I’ll see that Andy Graham has got away.”
Danforth waited till he and Malone were alone, then he moved his chair closer to the latter’s desk. They were separated from the other detectives in the big room by several empty desks; none the less, he lowered his voice conspiratorially. “Scobie, it’s not going to be worth all the trouble this will cause. You’re going to be up against the Catholic Church.”