MAMista

by Len Deighton

  ‘Yes.’ Inez took her Polaroid camera and activated the flash. ‘This one is the doctor,’ she added.

  ‘From London?’

  ‘Yes,’ Lucas said.

  ‘Do you know, doctor, I estimated that I would have about thirty casualties still with me when I got here yesterday.’ He motioned with his hand like a street trader declaring his very lowest price. ‘Only one: Guizot.’ Ramón took Lucas by the arm and guided him out through the door. To Inez Ramón called, ‘Bring the camera and the M-3 and the wine bottle too.’ Ramón inhaled the cold morning air deeply to keep himself awake.

  It was growing lighter every minute. Fitful sunlight from across the river was just touching the treetops. ‘Like this,’ said Ramón. ‘Me at the wheel, Dr Guizot behind. Inez beside him. The doctor can take the photo.’

  ‘Allow me to take the photo, Comrade General,’ Angel Paz volunteered. ‘I am an expert at photography.’

  Ramón looked at the young man and nodded tiredly.

  Ramón arranged them in the jeep. Inez would be nearer to the camera than Ramón, but turning so that she would be recognizably a woman but not recognizably Inez. A woman guerrilla could mean funds in Los Angeles, sympathy in Tokyo and recruits in Río. To Lucas, Ramón said, ‘Could you help Dr Guizot to smile?’

  The Indian boy still embraced his charge. Lucas gently unwrapped the blanket. There was no blood on it because two waterproof ponchos had been wrapped around him under it. He crackled as he moved, for the dried blood had formed a brittle corset that held him upright. Lucas tilted the head back and leaned close to his mouth. Laymen expect at least that of a physician before he pronounces life extinct. ‘You know he’s …’

  ‘Hours ago,’ said Ramón. ‘No one could have done anything for him. Can you make him smile?’

  The dawn sunlight escaped suddenly from behind a piece of cloud and the forest awakened with birdsong and the chatter of grey monkeys. Some of them ran across the clearing, looked at the humans and then ran back up the trees to talk about it.

  ‘Can I make him smile?’ Lucas repeated it. In his career as a doctor he thought he’d been asked all the questions.

  Inez said, ‘It is for Comrade General Ramón,’ as if this formal announcement would make Lucas try harder.

  ‘What do you expect me to do?’ Lucas said. ‘Find out if he’s ticklish?’

  Paz – with the camera round his neck – was holding the gun. He waited to see how the general would react to such insubordination and was disappointed to see the way in which Ramón let it go.

  No one spoke. A monkey, more daring than the rest, came close enough to steal an opened can of beans from the back of the jeep. It picked the can up, sniffed at the contents and ate a handful before dropping the can and running away. Then it stopped and looked at them, trying to decide if there was danger. They all watched the monkey as it came back to collect the tin it had dropped. Paz levelled the M-3.

  ‘No,’ said Ramón, ‘we need bullets more than we need Yankee beans.’

  Lucas took Guizot’s face in his hands. In that sort of climate eviscerated corpses dry out like papier mâché. Indian families sometimes keep them to pray to. Lucas wondered what plans Ramón had for this one. Bullets had done the eviscerating; his guts had glued his feet to the metal floor of the jeep.

  Lucas half-closed the eyelids and moulded the mouth into a leer.

  ‘Good,’ said Ramón. He took the gun from Paz.

  ‘One eye winking?’ Lucas asked. Ramón elbowed him aside roughly and placed the M-3 machine gun on the knees of the corpse. It was a tacit endorsement of urban violence; one that a live Dr Guizot might not have provided. ‘Broad smiles,’ commanded Ramón from the driver’s seat. ‘This is the day of Liberation. Newspapers all over the world will carry this picture.’ He raised the empty wine bottle to his lips.

  Paz pressed the button and the flash lit the scene. They waited and then he peeled off the Polaroid print. It was a good picture, and although Guizot looked exhausted, he looked no more dead than the rest of them did.

  Inez put the photo with the press release and sent it to the boatman. Then two more photos were taken. Ramón put a hat on Guizot’s head and took off his jacket to be in shirt-sleeves. He posed with a cigar in one hand and the other round Guizot’s shoulder. These photos would be brought out to confound the disbelievers, or kept for another propaganda victory when one was needed.

  When the photo session was over, Ramón unclipped a spade from the side of the jeep. With little sign of effort he picked up Guizot’s body and put it over his shoulder. Perhaps Ramón wanted to demonstrate his physical strength. It would probably be a requirement for any man who hoped to command an army of workers and farmers. Perhaps that’s why Dr Guizot had never mustered as much support at home as he had won amongst foreign intellectuals. While Guizot was being interviewed on New York TV, Ramón had been killing Federalistas and destroying his rivals with equal aplomb.

  Paz and the Indian boy both reached for the other spade but Ramón said, ‘I’ll do it alone.’ He was going to be the only person who knew where to find proof that Dr Guizot was dead.

  ‘How long can you keep him alive?’ Lucas asked as Ramón took the weight on his shoulder.

  ‘Until his death can aid our struggle,’ said Ramón.

  ‘Quite an epitaph,’ Lucas said.

  ‘More a condition of employment,’ said Ramón. He breathed heavily under his burden and stepped past Lucas to find a suitable patch of soil in the jungle.

  ‘The Captains and the Kings depart,’ said Lucas. He was alone with Inez now.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. She wanted to tell him that his sort of disrespectful banter was not appropriate when talking with Ramón. These were desperate times; and desperate men. Already Lucas had become a party to what was probably Ramón’s most cherished secret. They would not readily let him go free to carry the news of Dr Guizot’s death to the outside world.

  ‘We say: “The wrath of kings is always heavy.”’

  He recognized it as a warning.

  When Ramón returned from his melancholy task he seemed to have recovered his spirits and his energy. He went to the jeep and fiddled with the radio set and acknowledged a message over the phone.

  ‘We have an important task to do,’ he announced when he came back to them.

  Inez looked at him quizzically. ‘We’re not going back to the base camp?’

  ‘Not directly.’

  ‘But …’

  ‘We have taken a beating … Yes, I know. That’s exactly why the Federalistas will expect us to head directly south, licking our wounds. Instead of that, we will attack.’

  Lucas watched him. Arms akimbo, Ramón’s eyes flashed. Here was good old Latin machismo emerging from this rational animal. Ramón was a figure both heroic and tragic. ‘I will lead an assault upon the American survey camp at Silver River.’

  ‘What are the Americans surveying?’ Lucas asked.

  ‘They are surveying us,’ said Ramón.

  ‘Why attack them?’

  At first it seemed as if Ramón would not deign to answer Lucas, but then he explained, ‘It will get headlines in all the foreign newspapers. It will prove that we are still active and aggressive following our battle at Misión which the powerful Benz propaganda machine will be describing as a defeat for us.’

  ‘Was it a defeat?’

  ‘We lost many good men; but it was a wonderful victory for the revolution.’

  ‘Guizot is dead,’ Angel Paz said.

  Ramón swung round to face him. ‘He is only dead for those who know he is dead,’ he said fiercely. ‘I will make it treason to say it.’

  ‘I beg your pardon, Comrade General.’ Nervously Paz took off his glasses, blew away a speck and put them on again.

  ‘Remember that, and you will ensure that our comrades had a victory at Misión.’

  ‘Yes, Comrade General. I will not forget.’

  ‘About thirty of my men survived and are fully armed and read
y to fight. They are waiting ten kilometres from here: back in the forest. The battalion adjutant may have rallied a dozen or so of the rearguard.’

  For a moment no one spoke. Both Lucas and Paz had been thinking in hundreds. Was this war? Ramón was talking in terms of a riot outside a bar. A raid on a survey camp might be all such a force could manage.

  ‘Mother of God!’ said Inez, who knew how many men had been committed to the raid. So it had been a massacre.

  9

  THE SURVEY CAMP. ‘It’s not unlike Florida.’

  ‘It’s not unlike Florida.’ When Jack Charrington closed his desk, and locked it for the night, he suddenly remembered what his wife had said to him at breakfast. ‘It’s not unlike Florida,’ she told him quite seriously. It wasn’t like Florida. Equatorial America is not like anywhere else in the world. She had been trying to cheer him up, pretending that she didn’t hate being here. Not that he needed cheering up on his own account. Charrington was a scientist and totally absorbed in his work. Being at the North Pole or the Equator made little difference to him. But she knew that he worried about her. She didn’t adapt easily to climatic extremes, and life in a remote and isolated survey camp was difficult to get used to.

  Until the previous year, such survey camp assignments had been categorized as ‘hardship: men-only sixty-day’ tours of duty. It was under pressure from the costly loss of scientific staff that the oil company had had a change of heart. The buildings here had been made more comfortable and ten married quarters built. Once a week the company helicopter was taken off its survey work to deliver fresh fruit and vegetables, meat and fish. It also brought newspapers, detergent, videos and all manner of extras that American families consider necessities. The company helicopter even fetched and carried dry-cleaning. The only thing missing was hard liquor. Beer, but no distilled beverages. That was company policy and it would not be changed. Ten years ago, not far away from Silver River, a mapping team had all been murdered by local Indians who wanted their whisky.

  ‘A penny for them, Jack.’

  Charrington took one final look at the papers on his desk to be sure there was nothing he’d forgotten. Then he turned to his friend Singer. He didn’t want to mention the men who had been murdered at Silver River. He said, ‘The guerrillas think we are here to find their camps.’

  ‘Aren’t we?’ said Singer, provocative as always.

  ‘You know we aren’t,’ Charrington said. He was one of the most brilliant men Singer had ever met. Why had he been born without even the beginnings of a sense of humour?

  ‘The air survey will reveal their camps,’ Singer persisted. Gerald Singer had enough sense of humour for both of them. He used it to hide behind. A 200-pound bass-voiced black from New York City, Singer was always ready to rib anyone about anything while confiding in no one. At Princeton his joke had been to play ‘Johnny Reb’ to any Yankee willing. But Charrington, from Wyoming, had no interest in such games.

  Singer was an enigmatic figure, if not a tragic one. ‘Pagliacci’, Charrington had called him once. That was soon after they’d first met. Singer’s cutting response revealed something of his middle-class upbringing. It also revealed to Charrington the extent of his own prejudice, for he’d not expected that this tough black linebacker could also be an articulate opera buff. And yet the exchange, and many other conversations that came after it, defined Singer as a loner. Charrington suspected that deep inside this mysterious man there was some sort of desire for a wife and family, a suburban house and the sort of friendships that make middle-class America function so well. But Singer was secretive and gave no sign of such desire. Meanwhile Charrington and Singer had worked out a relationship based on mutual respect and Charrington’s appetite for Singer’s sort of jokes. It also depended upon Charrington putting up with occasional bursts of song: ‘I’ve got plenty of nothin’ and nothin’s plenty for me.’ At first Charrington thought they were expressions of happiness, but he’d come to revise that opinion. ‘Singer by name; singer by nature,’ was all Jerry would say. His bass voice was melodious, his musical sense precise, but sometimes his songs seemed more like a cry of distress.

  ‘The air survey will reveal their camps,’ said Singer again. He was used to the fact that Charrington’s thought process sometimes seemed to deprive him of his hearing. Charrington took it seriously. He looked at him, ‘I’m not so sure air survey photos will. Not even the thermal pictures. In Vietnam they needed to defoliate in order to locate the Cong.’

  ‘These local boys are more careless,’ said Singer. ‘They leave trails everywhere. You’ve seen them from the air, haven’t you?’

  ‘You are beginning to talk like those two CIA heavies that came through last month,’ Charrington said, and smiled. The two visitors had been described as chemists but couldn’t understand even the most elementary things they saw in the laboratory. The motive for their sudden visit had still not been explained. ‘How do you know those trails are guerrilla trails?’ Charrington asked. ‘Why shouldn’t they just be locals moving from village to village?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Singer. ‘And come Christmas Eve hang up your stocking.’

  The door opened and the senior driver, or ‘motor transport manager’ as he was officially known, came in to sign the book. ‘Any word about this morning’s truck?’ Charrington asked him.

  He was a local man with that doleful manner typical of Indian personnel. ‘Nothing,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Singer told Charrington. He switched off his desk light and the moonlight coming through the window seemed very blue. ‘Some of those jalopies are on their last legs.’ The door banged as the driver went out. ‘He’s probably along the valley somewhere with a broken half-shaft. Or trying to fix a flat. Most of them carry a blanket in the cab. It happens all the time.’

  ‘Not in one of the new Volvos it doesn’t,’ said Charrington.

  Dark came suddenly as it does in the tropics. They watched through the window to see the driver walk across to the lighted mess hall and into the kitchen. Everyone shared the same mess hall. It was what Singer derisively called democracy in action. But the drivers and labourers usually contrived to eat at odd times so they could have the chilli and beans that were always on the stove ready for casual meals.

  ‘They don’t like meat,’ said Singer as if reading his friend’s thoughts. ‘Do you realize that?’

  ‘Maybe they don’t want to like it,’ said Charrington. ‘If they develop a taste for it and then we move on, they’ll have precious little chance to get any more.’ He switched off the ceiling lights and the air-conditioning master-switch and the two men stepped out into the cooling evening air.

  ‘Are we moving on?’

  ‘Don’t ask me. I’m just a bug man,’ said Charrington. He was a palaeontologist. So far he’d resisted being drawn deeper into the business of oil exploration. He still nursed hopes of going back into pure research – or maybe even teaching – even if it meant taking less money home.

  ‘Funny to think this valley was once connected to the ocean,’ Singer said. He waited while Charrington locked up. The storms had passed and the dustless air revealed a million stars. There was enough moonlight to see fifty miles down what locals called the Valley of Silver River. There was nothing but trees and the river, now truly silver in the bright moonlight.

  With the authority of the scientist Charrington said, ‘Probably an inland sea, rich in all kinds of life; vegetable and animal. Those organisms died and formed a sediment on the bed of a shallow sea.’

  ‘Was the water level as high as this?’

  ‘Higher.’

  ‘Not so shallow then?’

  ‘Silting up. Very low oxygen content in the sea, so not much decay. The layers of sediment were pressed down … pressed so hard they became hot and eventually became oil.’

  ‘You can tell all that from your fossils?’

  ‘A whole lot more than that. And the seismogram will answer a few supplementary questions. Didn’t you ever
go on one of those familiarization courses in Houston?’

  ‘So there is oil in the valley?’

  Charrington loved to explain things. He cupped his hand palm downwards. ‘When the strata are like that we start talking about “a sedimentary basin”. The guys in Houston start saying “oil basin” and the stock exchange goes crazy. But there is no one who can say there is more than a warm fart down there until we punch a hole in the strata and find the crude. Don’t ever buy a piece of a wildcat mining scheme, Jerry.’

  ‘Are we moving, Jack? What did Houston say?’

  ‘All I know is bugs … even then they have to be a million years dead and under a microscope. I told Houston that they should have another survey team, with a mobile rig, working back towards us.’

  ‘They’d be working right through MAMista territory, Jack.’

  ‘I just look at bugs,’ said Charrington phlegmatically. ‘I’ve got no political axe to grind.’ He shivered. ‘You pay for these starry nights. It’s getting cold now.’

  ‘You should complain; with a nice warm wife waiting, and your booze ration not half-used.’

  ‘We seldom drink at all,’ said Charrington. ‘Can you use a couple of six-packs of Coors?’

  Singer slapped his belly and tried to summon the willpower to say no. ‘I won’t say no. I tried the local home-made gin last night. It’s like paint remover.’

  They had reached the Clubhouse. Most of the thirty Americans and some wives were watching ‘Dallas’ on the video. Some of them had seen it three times before. Boredom was the greatest enemy. So far they had all got along well together. But it was a social experiment. Later if there were arguments, jealousy, drunken fights or adultery, no one doubted that boredom would be at the root of it.

  Inez saw the flash of light as the door opened. ‘They must be in the clubhouse,’ she told Ramón, who’d come up to this uncomfortable spot to see what was going on. ‘They sit around in there, drinking beer and watching TV.’

  ‘I’ll send the American boy up here with you. He will have to learn our methods. We’ll spend tomorrow just watching them. We’ll make the decisions when Maestro’s company arrives.’