by John Harris
‘Have dinner with me, Magdalena.’
She hesitated only a moment. ‘Why not? The day after tomorrow the First Chief is holding a conference so there’s no performance.’
The only sizeable hotel was full of pressmen clamouring for accommodation. But most of Carranza’s cabinet and political hangers-on were already there, sleeping four to a room, on cots in the corridors, on the stairs, on the floor, under and on the billiard table.
Despite the hour, the newspapermen were still occupied in trying to acquire cars and, finding them not as plentiful as in the States, were settling for carriages, spiders, ancient buggies, even saddle horses. They were far from filled with admiration for the new American president, Woodrow Wilson, who was determined, they claimed, that Latin American countries should be shown how to run their affairs without murder. They didn’t give much for his chances.
Among the yelling crowd was a girl. She wore a stetson, breeches and a leather jacket and, seeing Slattery on his own, she took his arm.
‘Pretend you know me,’ she said quickly. ‘The little guy over there keeps pestering me.’
The man who followed her was small and wore a dark suit and a boater with a pink ribbon. He had a straggly moustache and a lot of gold teeth.
‘Scheele,’ he introduced himself. ‘Doctor Walter Scheele. I am German and I am here to sell the First Chief my secret weapon. Vill I show you?’
Slattery managed to brush him off and the girl smiled her thanks. ‘I’m representing Colliers magazine,’ she said. ‘I’m Consuela Lidgett. Consuela Doyle as was. I speak a bit of Spanish so they sent me to find out what Mexican women are doing. What are Mexican women doing?’
‘Keeping their heads down and praying, I imagine,’ Slattery said dryly.
She was small and delicate with an innocent expression, fair hair and lost-looking blue eyes that made the breeches and stetson seem out of place. She appeared to know little about news gathering and in the end she confessed.
‘Actually,’ she said, ‘I’m not from Colliers. I’m from the Gordonsboro Herald. Gordonsboro’s in Colorado. The editor’s my uncle and I persuaded him to send me. My husband’s here somewhere. Loyce Lidgett – Aloysius, that is. He’s a local boy so he’s news. I haven’t heard of him for some time and I thought I’d better go look.’ She managed a tired smile. ‘I decided that gettin’ myself made an official correspondent was the best way to do it. My uncle said he’d pay me. But it doesn’t amount to much and I’m not much of a hand at gettin’ news. You haven’t heard of Loyce, I suppose?’
‘I travelled to Chihuahua with him.’
‘He’d got a story?’
‘I don’t think it was a story he was after.’
She sighed. ‘I guess not. I heard he’d joined Villa’s foreign contingent. He could never resist being near a fight. Are you a newspaperman?’
As Slattery smiled, she looked up at him, a little awed by his size. ‘No,’ he admitted. ‘I can’t resist being near a fight either.’
Most of the correspondents weren’t very interested in Carranza. They were far more concerned with finding Villa, who was a much more colourful figure and of far greater interest to the newspaper-reading public. They had expected to find him with Carranza and, since all Carranza appeared to do was talk, they were having to fall back on stories about Huerta. There were plenty. He seemed to do the business of government in the oddest places about the capital so that foreign envoys had to scour saloons, cafés and parks for him. He preferred tea rooms and bars to offices, and did what little business he chose to do sitting with a secretary in a motor car.
To look after the noisy crowd of correspondents was a member of Carranza’s staff who said they should see the First Chief at once, despite the hour. Slattery joined the crowd as they set about finding a man who would take them to headquarters. But everyone had gone to sleep and the proprietor of the hotel, dragged from the chair where he was dozing because he had given his bed to someone else, didn’t know where anyone was. They kicked on doors and woke sleeping figures, most of whom turned out to be Carranza’s pro tem cabinet officials.
Eventually they found a man who agreed to take them to the office of the First Chief, which was in a large house where sentries in huge hats presented arms as they entered.
‘The First Chief’s very busy,’ they were told. ‘There are two thousand Federals and Orozquistas at Torreón, and we must have Torreón before we can advance on Mexico City. Questions will have to be put in writing to be answered tomorrow.’
Returning to the hotel, Slattery noticed Consuela Lidgett sleeping in an armchair. With the aid of a large denomination note, he persuaded the night clerk to find a cot for her.
Atty turned up with the Studebaker at first light and at breakfast a message arrived that the press interview with Carranza would be held in the evening. When the pressmen presented themselves once more, they found headquarters crammed with people carrying portfolios and bundles of papers; Americans seeking concessions; arms smugglers; ammunition salesmen dishing out praise for their wares, among them a man offering crayon enlargements from photographs at five pesos each; and once again Dr Scheele, trying to hawk his secret weapon. The feeling of watching a comic opera was remarkably strong.
Waiting in the anteroom was a large group of men who were clearly Europeans. They were straight-backed, with high starched collars and upswept moustaches, and once again Slattery was reminded of the words he’d heard in the office in Whitehall. Mexico seemed to be knee-deep in Germans, and the background of these men seemed to shout itself out loud.
A door opened and the military-looking men were beckoned forward. The man who beckoned them was Magdalena Graf’s brother, Fausto.
‘Who are those guys?’ one of the newspapermen asked. ‘They aren’t Mexes and they sure aren’t Americans.’
When Carranza finally condescended to see the newspapermen, he was accompanied by a whole host of hangers-on. He remained standing, surrounded by the pressmen, shaking hands and peering at them through the blue-tinted spectacles he wore, a big man with a big belly and a big nose. As the room filled with smoke from the photographers’ flash guns, the questions began. The American correspondents allowed nothing to slip past. They had a good grasp of the situation and had already spotted things that needed explanation.
‘Why is your government here in Nogales, First Chief,’ the New York Times man asked, ‘when all the action is over in Chihuahua?’
‘We direct operations from Nogales,’ Carranza said stiffly.
Another man lifted his hand. ‘I’m George Wiley, of the Post, First Chief,’ he said. ‘My editor says you’re doing nothing here but hibernate. Wouldn’t it be better to go over there and help?’
Carranza clearly didn’t like the way the interview was going and he began to talk to stop the barrage of questions. There were few interruptions. Just Carranza’s views. Stubborn and dogmatic, he was undoubtedly knowledgeable but was lacking in any spark of personality.
They were introduced to a man called Obregón, a smiling moustached farmer from Sonora who had become Carranza’s general in the west, and more photographs were taken. All the time the group of Germans round Fausto Graf watched in silence, standing in one of the corners out of the light, their backs to the room, showing their faces only when they turned to glance at a newspaperman asking a question. With them now was a new man, young, vaguely effeminate and ginger-haired, looking like one of them but somehow apart. He was speaking German but his accent was different.
Finally, with an expansive gesture, Carranza invited everybody to join him at dinner and the theatre. Someone handed him a wide-brimmed, light-coloured felt hat so that, with his quasi-military dress, he looked like a Confederate general left over from the American Civil War, and there was a clatter of arms and equipment as the guard of honour came to untidy attention. In the street a band started to play and, surrounded by his retinue, all jostling to hold a place near to him, Carranza began to march in step to a lively
version of ‘La Paloma’. Other men joined the procession, officers in uniform and civilians in evening dress. Among them was Fausto Graf, with a girl who looked no more than seventeen on his arm.
Atty Purkiss stared after them all, his face blank and cynical. ‘Mucho Pomposo heads for the munchies,’ he said. ‘That’s not a leader, me dear. It’s a walking monument.’
More intrigued by Magdalena Graf than he cared to admit, Slattery found his way to the theatre and sat quietly at the back of the pit stalls in an atmosphere of peeling gilt and dusty red plush.
The operetta was a tuneful piece set in the French Revolution, many of its lines adapted to what was happening in Mexico, and Magdalena’s rich pure soprano seemed too good for the lightweight part she was singing. With her blue eyes she stood out from her dark-eyed, dark-skinned fellow-performers. Her opposite number, Stutzmann, had a soft-looking body, a face that radiated good humour, and an ability to reach a wavering high C.
There were several smartly-dressed young men holding roses standing near the bar and when the show finished there was a rush for the stage door. Pushing his way past, Slattery lifted the doorman off his feet and, placing him behind him, dropped coins in his hand.
‘The Diva’s expecting me,’ he said. ‘Hold that lot off!’
Magdalena’s face lit up at the sight of him but she was nervous and worried.
‘Not tonight,’ she said, speaking breathlessly as she pleaded with him to understand. ‘Tonight there is so much to do. The orchestra was terrible. We have to sort it out and it will take until midnight. Tomorrow, though, I promise. I’ll be in the lounge of your hotel.’
As the theatre emptied, Nogales quietened quickly. Slattery had managed to bribe his way into a small room hardly bigger than a cupboard, which he was sharing with Atty Purkiss, and he had just fallen asleep when he was awakened by bells. Atty sat bolt upright.
‘Hotel’s on fire, me dear,’ he said placidly.
Half-dressed, they headed into the street. People were appearing from all directions, shouting and pointing. The fire was not in the hotel but in a small warehouse nearby where a few old saddles had been stored. One end was well alight and the fire brigade was struggling to get water to it. Their hose consisted of ill-fitting lengths, all of them punctured so that jets were hissing in all directions. Wearing brass helmets as big as hip baths, the firemen were shouting frantically at each other when suddenly the water pressure disappeared. As the taut pipes became limp and the miniature fountains sagged, the men holding the solitary nozzle stared at it in bewilderment.
Someone went off to have the pressure restored. As it returned, one of the firemen had his finger down the nozzle, trying to make out if it were blocked. The jet hit him full in the face and knocked him flat on his back while the hosepipe leapt free, to writhe like a wounded snake and saturate everybody within reach. By the time they had everything under control the end of the shed had fallen in.
Watching the uproar near Atty was the little German who had introduced himself as Dr Scheele. He was smiling and rubbing his hands. There was a girl with him. Atty gestured at him.
‘This feller here,’ he pointed out, ‘says he started it.’
Eight
Slattery stared down at the little German. He was perspiring heavily, mopping his face with a violet handkerchief. The girl watched without much interest.
‘He says what?’ Slattery asked.
Atty shrugged. ‘That he set light to it.’
Slattery stared at the German again. ‘Well, what’s he want us to do? Inform the police? Help him escape? Give him money? Was he seen setting light to it?’
‘Ach, nein, nein!’ Scheele seemed to regard Slattery as half-witted. ‘I am not such a dummkopf. I do not use a match.’
‘A bomb?’
Scheele smiled proudly and introduced himself all over again. ‘I am a chemist,’ he said. ‘Sehr geschickt. My credentials are excellent.’ He gestured at the sagging shed. ‘I set fire to draw attention to what I haf. You vill vant to know.’
‘Will I?’
‘You haf an automobile. I vill meet you here tomorrow und I vill demonstrate.’
The following morning they were climbing into the Studebaker outside the hotel when Scheele appeared with the girl. He was dressed in a sugar-pink blazer with white piping and the straw boater with the pink ribbon. He carried a briefcase and appeared to think they were waiting for him.
‘Iss difficult to explain,’ he said. ‘It vill be better if I show you. Tell your chauffeur to drive us out of town.’
Atty stared indignantly but Slattery shrugged. ‘Do as he says, Atty,’ he advised.
They drove out to where the desert sagged into a series of folds. Among them were clumps of mesquite and cactus. While the girl remained in the car holding a sunshade, they walked a few yards from the road where Scheele scraped up the dried scraps of mesquite into two piles several yards apart. Opening the briefcase, he took out two short lengths of metal tubing. In the middle of each, with the aid of a pencil, he inserted a disc of copper, then he put on gloves and, taking two square-shouldered chemist’s bottles from his bag, filled the separated halves of the tubes from them and plugged the ends with sealing wax round an airtight cap. Atty began to grow bored. He clearly didn’t like Scheele.
‘Soon it iss finished,’ Scheele said.
Laying the two lengths of tube on the piles of mesquite, he removed his boater and fanned himself with it. He was bald, with wisps of hair plastered to his head with perspiration.
‘Perhaps ve move back a little,’ he suggested, gesturing at the tubes.
They waited for several minutes, their eyes on the tubes. When nothing happened, Atty began to grow restless.
‘He’s having us on,’ he said.
‘Nein, nein,’ Scheele said. ‘Bitte. Please. Be patient.’
‘What do they do?’ Slattery asked. ‘Explode?’
‘Ach, nein.’ Scheele looked shocked. ‘They are not bombs.’
‘How do you set them off?’
‘I haf set them off. Nothing vill stop them now.’
After half an hour Atty lit a cigarette and wandered off to talk to the girl, his interest lost. Slattery looked at his watch.
‘How much longer?’
‘Ein moment, bitte.’
Slattery was just about to give up when there was a soft pop and a hiss, and a searing white flame a foot long leapt from the end of one of the cylinders. A few seconds later more flame burst from the other end. The brightness was dazzling and Slattery could feel the heat that was given off. The twigs had caught fire and were crackling as the flames devoured them.
Atty had come back at a run. The tube burned fiercely for several minutes, the flames vivid and intense. When they went out the pile of twigs had gone and in their place was a small shallow baked trough in the earth that was still smoking. As Slattery moved forward, Scheele held his arm.
‘Achtung, mein Herr! Take care!’
There was no sign of the metal tube beyond a small flattened silvery shape where it had melted. Slattery looked at the second tube.
‘What about that one?’
‘Another half-hour. I haf arranged it so.’
Prompt on time, the second tube burst into flames. By this time Slattery was intrigued.
‘How safe are they?’ he asked.
Scheele beamed. ‘Iss no danger at all. I call them my cigars. Do you like them?’
‘How’s it done? A fuse?’
‘Nein, nein. My tubes are of lead, und in the middle is a copper disc. In vun half of the tube is sulphuric acid. In the other half picric acid. Both ends iss fit mit a vax plug und a lead cap. The sulphuric eat through the copper disc und ven the two chemicals come into contact mit each other, they burst into flame. Sehr heiss. Very hot. It melt the tube und, as you see, it leave no trace. The copper disc, you understand, iss the timing device. The thicker it iss, the longer the acid take to burn through it. Iss very simple, iss it not?’
They dropped Scheele back in Nogales and watched him strut away with the girl on his arm, a small plump figure full of its own importance carrying a lethal briefcase.
Slattery’s eyes were narrow and his mind was working fast as they sat outside the hotel with a beer. Introduced into a wagonload of flammable material, one of Scheele’s ‘cigars’ could do immense damage.
Atty was thinking the same way. ‘I reckon,’ he said slowly, ‘that we should be roundin’ him up and whippin’ him along to Villa.’
But they were already too late. When they started searching they found Scheele had vanished and his girlfriend was on the verge of tears.
‘He went off with the German gentlemen in a motor car,’ she said.
Slattery frowned. ‘They don’t miss much, do they?’ he said.
When they returned to the hotel, Consuela Lidgett attached herself to them at once, petite, fair, pretty and eager to talk. She was full of information about Carranza who, she said, was in a bad temper and refusing to hand out snippets of news.
‘You ask me,’ she said, ‘he’s only interested in cameramen.’
Pushing her over to Atty, Slattery went in search of Magdalena. As she had promised, she was waiting in the crowded foyer. She was wearing blue again and had clearly taken a lot of trouble with her appearance. As Slattery drew nearer, her brother rose, smiling, from behind a palm alongside her and rested his hand on her shoulder. She shrugged it off but he put it back.
‘I gather you’re dining,’ he said. ‘Perhaps I should join you.’
Slattery’s features were expressionless. ‘I’m sure the First Chief’s need is greater than ours. You must have papers to sort out, facts to gather, enemies to set up, chemists to drive to the station.’
Graf’s smile slipped a little but it soon returned. ‘Dr Scheele is German,’ he said. ‘A man with his gifts belongs to the Fatherland, not to Don Venus.’