by John Harris
‘For the flowers, your honour,’ she said. ‘On the grave of the little sister-in-law. It is much neglected.’
‘Where is she staying?’
‘When she go to Carrizal, she always stay at the Rancho Santo Domingo. The owner get her to sing. He say it is all the payment he want.’
As they picked up the train to El Sueco, Atty eyed Slattery suspiciously. ‘Why are we goin’ to El Sueco?’ he asked. ‘It don’t sound like ’Orrocks’ business to me.’
Slattery’s reply was abrupt. ‘It isn’t Horrocks’ business,’ he said.
At El Sueco an American engineer warned there were a lot of Carrancista troops across the road to Villa Ahumada. ‘You should hit Carrizal from the west,’ he said. ‘Then you’ll be okay. There are Yankee troops round there.’
They hired horses and set off. The road was little more than a track and they found the Santo Domingo Ranch without difficulty. The owner was worried because he was expecting trouble.
‘You can smell it,’ he said. ‘The Mexican people have had enough of the American army trampling all over their territory.’
‘What about Doña Magdalena?’
‘My foreman took her to Carrizal in the buggy yesterday. He dropped her at the hotel. But soon after they left the cavalry arrived here from Casas Grandes. They said they were going to ride through Carrizal.’
The foreman had been questioned by the American officer about Carrancista concentrations. ‘There are a lot of Mexican soldiers there, your honour,’ he told Slattery. ‘It looked to me like a trap. But he had a guide with him who said Mexicans were cowards and would always run away.’
‘Who was this guide? Do you know?’
The foreman shrugged. ‘He wasn’t a Norteamericano. But he also wasn’t a Mexican.’
The sun was well up by now and the air was hot. As they jogged eastwards towards Carrizal, Atty reined in and pointed. A small cloud of dust on the horizon was resolving itself into a group of horsemen riding hard. They drew to one side and the horsemen, black soldiers of the United States cavalry pulled up their lathered horses. They looked exhausted and panic-stricken and some had no weapons.
‘They’ve massacred the Tenth Cavalry!’ one of them yelled through the cloud of dust they had stirred up. ‘The captain and the lieutenant are down. We’re headin’ for Galeana for reinforcements.’
Without further explanation, they set spurs to their jaded horses and headed westwards again. Shortly afterwards three more men appeared with the same news, then several small fast-riding parties, all obviously bolting but all claiming to be going for help.
The Mexicans in Carrizal were deployed along an irrigation ditch. There were signs of recent fighting in scattered and broken equipment, a dead horse, and scraps of abandoned clothing. A group of Mexicans were carrying away the body of an American soldier. At first they assumed Slattery was another American but when they learned his nationality they welcomed him as a witness to what had happened. They were flushed with triumph but had deliberately not pushed their advantage and insisted they had warned the Americans.
‘We have twenty-three prisoners,’ they said. ‘It will mean war.’
Since there were no American consular officials available, it was obviously Slattery’s duty to do what he could for the captives and they were led to a shed to the north of the town. The black soldiers, wounded and unwounded, had been stripped of their weapons and clothing and were scared, hungry and expecting to be shot.
‘Why did you do it?’ Slattery asked one of them.
‘Because the captain said so. The guide said there was an American woman held prisoner in Carrizal. The captain thought we ought to save her.’
Leaving Atty with the prisoners, Slattery headed for the centre of the little town. The hotel was a large dusty building and was full of soldiers. Magdalena was sitting in the lounge on an upright chair, pale and dry-eyed. She was dressed in black with a wide black hat with a veil, and she was clutching a wreath. Jesús was with her, his face filled with determination.
As Slattery appeared, Magdalena’s head lifted and her eyes met his, but nothing came from within her to meet him, and her face remained secret and enigmatic.
‘Why in God’s name did you come here?’ Slattery demanded sharply.
‘To put flowers on a grave,’ she snapped back. ‘I was told it was safe.’
‘Who by?’
She didn’t answer and he made his own guess. ‘Are they holding you a prisoner?’
‘Nobody was interested in me until the fighting started.’
Slattery indicated the door. ‘I’m taking you away,’ he said.
He was aware of an inward tribunal summing him up. ‘They won’t let you,’ she said quietly. ‘Even if I wasn’t a prisoner at first, I am now.’
‘I can fix it.’ He spoke with confidence. ‘I’m taking you to Villa Ahumada to put you on the train to Chihuahua. Wait for me there. Get your things together. I’ll be back.’
The Mexicans were still being co-operative but the burial of their dead had stirred tempers and a mob had gathered near the shed where the American captives were held and were hurling stones.
‘I want them on the train to Chihuahua,’ Slattery insisted.
‘They’ll be murdered on the way,’ the Mexican officer said.
‘Not if you provide a strong escort. It’s up to you. The fate of Mexico could be in your hands.’
The Mexican agreed at last and Slattery hurried to the telegraph office to contact Horrocks.
It was already dark but the telegraph was still working. Outside the office there was a group of shadowy figures standing at the end of a nearby alley. Leaving after sending his message, Slattery paused to light a cigarette. As he threw the match away, he was aware of one of the men from the alley alongside him.
‘Come with me, your honour,’ he murmured.
Slattery looked around him warily.
‘It’s all right, your honour. I promise.’
The man took Slattery’s arm and, against his better judgement, Slattery allowed himself to be pulled along. As he reached the alley end, the dark shapes, their faces obscured by the wide sombreros they wore, seemed to envelop him. He was just wondering if he hadn’t been a fool and walked into a trap when his arms were seized and a pistol was stuck up to his nose. He could smell the burnt powder and gun oil. A familiar voice came out of the darkness.
‘Holá, inglés.’
Slattery’s head jerked up. ‘Don Pancho! What in the name of God are you doing here?’
It was impossible to see Villa’s face but there was no mistaking the voice. ‘This is Mexico, inglés,’ it said coldly. ‘Nobody has forbidden me my own country. This is my land. Chihuahua. Villa land. Nobody tells me what to do here.’
‘What do you want, Don Pancho?’
‘I’ve come for you, inglés. You betrayed me to the Americans. You told them. After they took the bullet out, I had to hide in a cave in the hills and they were searching for me. They were just below us. I watched them. They knew I was there somewhere.’
His heart thumping, Slattery managed to keep his head in spite of that murderous pistol just below his nose. ‘I didn’t tell them, Don Pancho. When I met you, you were many leagues from Guerrero and they thought you were still there when they attacked it. What you saw was a patrol, I expect, who had no idea you were there.’
‘You didn’t tell them?’
‘No.’
There was a long silence as Villa churned over what he had heard. ‘I expect that’s right, inglés. You wouldn’t betray me. I brooded on it. But I was in great pain and it made things go hazy in my mind.’ There was a pause. ‘You aren’t frightened of my gun, inglés. You’re never frightened of it, yet it frightens most people.’
Slattery almost laughed. Anybody facing Villa’s pistol had a good reason for being frightened. He tried to speak calmly.
‘I’m not frightened, Don Pancho, because I’m not guilty.’
‘Dios, you Englis
h! You’re so smug. Still, now I have you, I can use you.’
‘I don’t betray my country, Panchito, any more than I betray you.’
Villa nodded. ‘You’ll be free to go. You’re too thin-skinned to be of value to me, anyway, and this is a world where cold-bloodedness counts most. I won’t hold you.’
‘What do you want of me?’
‘I need my mouthpiece.’
Slattery drew a deep breath, determined not to be drawn into the intricacies of Mexican politics again. ‘I’m not your man any longer, Don Pancho,’ he said. ‘I’m working for my own country.’
‘It is of no matter. I just need to tell someone the truth. This affair in Carrizal is nothing to do with me.’
‘I never thought it was, Don Pancho. Is that all you wanted of me?’
‘Not all of it. I was not responsible for Columbus either, inglés. That was the Germans. It was German money. Carranza money. They used some of my gente. I was in Sabinas in Coahuila at the time. I had given up the fight against Carranza. I even made a farewell speech to my gente. There was an American there who tried to tell them, but they chose not to believe him. When those engineers were shot at Santa Ysabel I was in Parral. That was also nothing to do with me. It was arranged by a German working with Carrancista agents. But I am a convenient scapegoat. For the Germans. For the Americans. For Don Venus. Tell people all this, inglés.’
It was a long speech and Slattery didn’t know how much of it to believe.
‘What now, Don Pancho? Shall you cross the border?’
‘Into America?’ Villa sounded startled. ‘They’d hang me.’
‘I thought the other border. Into Guatemala.’
Slattery caught the flash of teeth as Villa grinned. ‘I am all right, inglés. I have no need to worry. Not after Carrizal. After Carrizal the Germans are just waiting for the Yanquis to make their intervention a full-scale invasion. The foreign businessmen would like that. German propaganda has pushed the rumours that America is intending to annexe everything as far south as the Panama Canal not only into Mexican heads, but into Norteamericano heads as well.’
As always, Slattery was surprised at Villa’s shrewdness. ‘What then, Don Pancho?’
Villa grinned again. ‘It’s only three months since they wanted to hang me for Columbus, but now both Carranza and the Norteamericanos are so busy with each other they’ve forgotten me.’
The following morning, the American prisoners, chained together and still only half-clothed, were packed into open lorries. As soon as the population of Carrizal learned what was happening, they began to gather, spitting, shouting, throwing stones and ordure.
‘For God’s sake,’ Slattery snapped at the Mexican officer. ‘Couldn’t you have found covered lorries?’
‘They won’t be denied their revenge,’ the Mexican said stiffly. ‘And who am I to cheat them? If they want to throw filth, let them.’
Atty had hired a Model T Ford and they clattered up to the hotel while the yelling and the insults were still going on. Magdalena was waiting for them, pale and nervous. As she left the hotel, a woman spat at her. ‘Americana,’ she said.
As they drove off, the lorries were just leaving under a shower of stones, filth and dead rats and cats, but as they left the town the crowd thinned out and finally vanished. The sun was hot and the strong wind was lifting clouds of grit and dust and rattling them against the isinglass side curtains of the car.
Somehow, information had reached Villa Ahumada ahead of them and there was another crowd there. Persuaded by Slattery, the Mexican officer kept the lorries on the edge of the town until the last moment, waiting until they saw the smoke of the locomotive appearing from the north, then they roared in, dumped their prisoners on the wrong side of the track as the train drew to a stop and bundled them aboard a boxcar before the waiting crowd realised what had happened. Cheated, their showers of filth and stones bounced ineffectually off the sides of the closed car.
Throughout the journey, Magdalena said nothing, staring out of the window at the scorched brown landscape, lost in her own thoughts. As the train drew into Chihuahua, it seemed they had thrown off the vengeful crowds. Nobody was aware of their arrival beyond the soldiery who had turned up to meet them with three covered vans. The prisoners and the wounded were pushed inside and the vans clattered away towards the jail.
Magdalena was waiting quietly with Jesús in the shadow of the station buildings. As the cab dropped them all at her house, she turned on the doorstep.
‘Fitz–’ she began.
He gestured to the waiting taxi. ‘I’ll be back,’ he said shortly. ‘I have things to attend to. It may take a while.’
The cab dropped him at the hotel Horrocks and Midwinter always used. He wasn’t surprised to see them in the foyer.
‘What in the name of God happened?’ Midwinter demanded. ‘Was it a defeat?’
‘If you call forty-four casualties a defeat, yes, it was.’
‘Forty-four? Jesus, the Germans are going to love this!’ Midwinter’s eyes blazed. ‘What the hell were they doing at Carrizal? They were miles from where they should have been. Who was behind it?’
‘Graf.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I always know. He said the Mexicans would run.’
Midwinter glared. ‘From now on, if that guy lifts a finger to flick the snot off his nose, I’ll want to know why. The general in Columbus is throwin’ a fit. Washington was on the point of withdrawin’ our boys from Mexico. Now they can’t. It’d look like we’d been kicked out. Hell’ – his eyes were like ice – ‘and if they stay it’ll be out-and-out war.’
Magdalena’s house was in darkness when Slattery arrived outside. There was no sound and no sign of life, just the silver-white of the moon.
As the iron gate slammed behind him, a light appeared and, as he tapped on the door, he heard Jesús’ voice.
‘It’s me, Slattery!’
The door opened a fraction and, in the light of a candle on a table, he saw Jesús, a kitchen knife in his hand, barely awake.
Magdalena was at the top of the stairs by the door of her room. She had been in bed and her hair was loosely tied in a knot so that it hung to her shoulder. She was wearing a dressing-gown over a white nightdress.
Slattery gestured. ‘Beat it, Jesús,’ he said. ‘Go back to bed.’
Magdalena seemed about to protest but changed her mind, and as the boy vanished Slattery moved slowly up the stairs. She met him at the top, standing in the doorway of her room, facing him, her eyes fixed on his.
‘Why?’ she whispered at last. ‘Why did you come to me at Carrizal?’
He was about to say brusquely that it was because he had been on duty, but he changed his mind even as the words formed on his tongue.
‘Because I had to,’ he said. ‘You once explained it yourself. Because you’re Magdalena Graf and I’m Fitz Slattery.’
As he moved forward, almost as if she were unaware of what she was doing, she retreated in front of him until he was inside the room, too. As he faced her, they gazed at each other in silence, her eyes entreating understanding. For a while, he was expecting her to push him away, but suddenly she moved into his arms, clutching him like a frightened child, as if she’d been terrified but had been holding her terror at bay with every fibre of her body. As his arms closed round her a whimpering sigh escaped her. Struggling with the last of her conscience, her only protest was a weak appeal to propriety.
‘Suppose someone comes?’
Slattery pushed the door to with his heel. ‘They won’t,’ he said.
Seven
The mistake Horrocks had predicted the Germans would make came earlier than anyone expected.
When, on the seventeenth day of the new year, 1917, the duty officer at British Naval Intelligence in London opened the first message of the morning, he realised it was in non-naval code, and directed it to the political section, where it was immediately noticed that it was of an unusual length. A closer
inspection showed that it was in German code and the decoders examining it began to search the code books to decipher the name of the sender.
‘Zimmermann?’ The man crouched over the message looked up. ‘The German Foreign Secretary? What’s he want?’
A little more work showed the words ‘Most Secret’ and ‘For Your Excellency’s personal information.’
The decoders looked at each other. ‘It’s directed to Washington,’ one of them said. ‘It must be for the German ambassador.’
Within a short time the word ‘Mexico’ appeared and then ‘Japan’ and there was mention of an ‘alliance’. The decoders stared at each other again. Alliance? Japan was on the allies’ side. Surely she wasn’t considering switching to the Germans? The pages of the code book flipped back and forth with the rustle of paper as word after word was tried and discarded. After two hours’ work, they had no more than an incomplete version of the message, but its significance was already such that they couldn’t believe their eyes.
The situation in Europe was growing worse daily and the U-boats were making a cemetery of the waters round the British Isles, while, with American ships’ captains unwilling to sail because of the threat, urgently needed cargoes were piling up in American ports.
In Horrock’s hotel room, littered with papers, telegrams and cigarette ends, they worked out what they knew. There were reports that the Union of German Citizens in Mexico now had twenty-nine district committees spreading German Kultur; the Iron Cross Society had reported seventy-five branches, and its members were all engaged in promoting Germany, some from positions in the Mexican army; German money was subsidising Mexican newspapers; agents were fomenting strikes in Tampico and among Mexican labourers in Arizona and California; while more German money was buying up mines vacated by Americans who had fled north from the chaos across the border.
‘What nobody seems to have noticed, though,’ Slattery said, ‘is that Carrizal might be to our advantage.’
Heads came up and he gestured. ‘Villa’s relishing what’s happened. It’s only a few weeks since Columbus and already everybody’s forgotten him. He can start to rally his gente again. And a resurgence of Villa would mean the one thing we all want – Wilson too – the withdrawal of the Punitive Expedition – has become possible. The Mexicans will be too occupied with getting at each other’s throats to be interested.’