MAMista

by Len Deighton

  The actual sentry-post was a wrecked Chevrolet. Its paint had faded to a very faint purple so that it was no longer evident what colour it had originally been. There were many stories told about how the Chevvy had got to this remote crest. Some said it was a rented car, its powerful engine stolen to power a boat before it arrived up here. Others said the car had been driven here for a wager by a drunken Yankee millionaire. The stories had been improved by sentries sheltering here from the cold wind and bored beyond measure. Much of the car’s glass was intact, although the seats had lost their springs and stuffing. Angel Paz was standing on the roof of the car. He was using his field-glasses to follow the route they must take, while adopting a heroic pose that might have inspired a sculptor.

  The hilltop was bare. The men assigned to the journey north dozed in the welcome sunlight. They had come only three miles or so along the well-trodden outer paths of the camp but already some of them had eaten their rations. Angel Paz jumped from the car roof in a casual demonstration of agility. Then he shouted commands to arrange his party in the formation that he’d devised for the whole journey. There would be three files, each about fifty paces apart. Angel Paz with his fine brass compass would lead the middle file. Santos would lead the left-hand file. This included six packmules, one of them burdened with Novillo’s machine gun, another with its equally heavy tripod. The files would close to form a column when the jungle became so dense as to need cutting.

  Singer hobbled back to his chair using a stick as a crutch. He was to be carried too, at least for the first day or so. It had been decided that the height of a man riding on a mule would be inconvenient in the close jungle. So he was placed in the middle of the formation, seated on a kitchen chair with two long springy poles fixed to its sides. Two bearers carried him: his head was only slightly higher than theirs. Inez was assigned to help the two men carrying Singer, for each of them was also burdened with his baggage. It was to be Inez’s task to maintain contact between Paz and the mule drivers. Paz was anxious about the machine-gun team. Ramón had told him to guard that machine gun with his life. Lucas was at the back with the six men of the rearguard.

  Paz had devised a system of arm signals. Fist upraised for halt; open hands for guns ready; spread arms for conceal yourselves in the bush. There was no signal to open fire. They would fire when Paz fired and not before. With Paz and Sergeant Santos these men had all spent the previous day practising their deployments.

  Paz consulted his watch and then the compass before looking back to where Lucas stood with the rearguard. Solemnly he waved and Lucas waved back. Paz pumped his hand twice – move forward – and, without turning to see what was happening behind him, he marched forward along the line indicated by the compass needle. The ground sloped downwards to where the shrubland and trees began again.

  The men made very little sound as they moved, for the ground underfoot was dry. They reached the tree line and moved through open country dotted with thorn bushes and scrub. The middle file followed a rough path; the other files made slower progress. As they descended the trees became taller, stouter and closer together so that progress was less easy. It became gloomy too. The blaze marks on the trees became less easy to see and finally petered out altogether.

  It was easier underfoot: flat earth under primary jungle. In such constant heat and humidity – without winters to kill the insects – the leaves and debris decomposed quickly. The floor of the jungle was firm and in some places hard like rock. The men got into the swing of a march. There was little talking except the occasional caution passed back to the men behind.

  The previous day, Angel Paz had tried to make his peace with Singer and find some common purpose with Lucas. But Paz was not practised at reconciliations and overtures of friendship, and his underlying contempt for both of them proved an insuperable obstacle. If they would not accept his offers of friendship, they’d have to take his orders. That was the way Paz saw it. On the march he would remain aloof. His face was bruised and his body still ached with the pain of the powerful blow that Singer had delivered to his middle. His self-imposed isolation was not good for Paz’s temper. More than once he’d lashed out at those nearest to him. All too often the one nearest to him had been comrade Santos. Santos gave no sign of resentment but he was not of the same phlegmatic temperament as the Indians. His calm was self-imposed. Those who knew Santos, and could recognize the look on his face, were waiting for the explosion that was sure to come.

  Inez Cassidy too started the march with muddled thoughts. No matter how much she wanted to stay near Lucas, she had fully expected that Ramón would order her to remain at the camp. She had reconciled herself to the idea that such an order would be binding upon her. Even at the hilltop she’d expected a last-minute message. But no reprieve had come. Ramón – always at heart the devious peasant – had smiled and wished her luck and bon voyage. And now she felt the weight of the pack cutting into her shoulders, and with the smell of the jungle filling her nostrils, she knew there would be no turning back.

  It was just as well. Without her she felt sure that Lucas would never get to Tepilo. She’d watched him over the period he’d spent in the camp. She’d seen him trying to cope with the problems endemic there. He’d been unprepared for the misery and frustrated by his own inadequacy. ‘Like standing under a waterfall with a teacup,’ he’d told her. It said more about Lucas and his mental state than about the camp. He would need her more and more badly in the coming days. That was the only thing about which she was certain.

  As she settled into the rhythm of the march she thought yet again about Angel Paz, and the way he’d approached her in the laundry the previous evening with his childlike plea of letting bygones be bygones. She did not hate Paz any more than she hated Singer. They were both the same sort of opportunistic males ready to use anything and anyone for their own selfish purposes.

  When she was younger she would have found Paz attractive. He was young and strong and idealistic. But he was also headstrong and simplistic and foolish in ways she could no longer tolerate. She could still see him standing opposite her talking earnestly the previous evening. As usual he’d been unable to speak without pointing and waving his hands about.

  ‘My mother – my real mother – died when I was seven,’ Paz had told her. She hadn’t missed the fact that Charrington’s child would have been about that age. Paz had obviously been brooding on that. ‘My Dad sent me to stay with relatives. I guess he wanted me out of the house so that he could bring his girlfriends back there.’

  Inez had nodded and started to retrieve the sterilized instruments one by one. She hadn’t looked at his face. ‘I must go,’ Inez had said, picking up the tray. She could see that Paz would talk and talk until she came round to his point of view. That was always his style of debate. She had moved to go but Paz had come round to confront her again.

  ‘I didn’t know that stupid woman was going to go rushing past the generator,’ Paz had insisted. The steam from the boiler had momentarily enveloped him. He’d reappeared from the clouds still gesticulating.

  ‘I must get back,’ Inez had said.

  ‘To your man?’ Paz had asked scornfully.

  ‘Yes, to my man,’ she’d told him. She had stepped around him and made her escape. That was the moment when she’d decided she wanted to make love to Lucas.

  They went miles and miles down the steep slope before coming to a sudden change in vegetation. It was a solid wall of greenery. Dense secondary growth followed a straight line. This was an area where the primary jungle had once been cleared and cultivated. Now nature had reclaimed it forcefully.

  Paz stopped the party. Imperiously he waved for Santos to come across from where he was at the head of the file. Everyone was breathless. Some of the steeper gradients had caused them to run to keep balanced.

  ‘We can’t get directly through this stuff, comrade Santos,’ said Paz. He was inclined to say such things as if Santos was directly responsible for the problem. ‘Bring the machetes fo
rward and take the files in closer. We’ll have to work our way round it.’

  Santos shouted for Nameo, the big black Cuban. He was the champion cutter. Paz hoped it was not going to prove a lengthy detour. While they waited for Nameo to come forward, Paz took a jungle knife from one of the men and slashed at the wall of greenery. A flurry of bright butterflies rose in a flittering cloud of colour. Paz kept chopping. When he’d made a gap in the matted growth he reached with the knife to prod the rotting remains of a large fruit. ‘Plantain!’

  ‘It is a bad plant,’ Santos said. It was an irritant that affected the eyes. ‘And there: tobacco!’

  Santos pointed to a piece of jungle that looked little different from the plantain. He’d recognized the big leaves of tobacco that had run wild.

  Nameo arrived with another Cuban cane-cutter. They were friends and liked to work together. Working alongside an inexpert man with such a knife can be a heart-stopping experience. By now Lucas had come up to see what had caused them to stop. ‘A plantation,’ Paz said in answer to his question. ‘Just think of it: some Spanish nobleman with a thousand Indian slaves … maybe got rich enough here to start a dynasty. Maybe went home to build himself a castle in Valencia.’

  ‘You have a fertile imagination,’ Lucas said.

  ‘We have to work round it,’ Paz said. ‘A mile: two miles at the most. Relieve the men cutting every few minutes.’ He glanced round to see where Inez Cassidy was, and noticed that she was keeping well to the rear. She’d decided to avoid Paz as much as possible.

  The men with the long jungle knives systematically cut a path through the dense vegetation. They worked with the same slow rhythm they had learned on the farms.

  They moved on, keeping close to the plantation growth to see the extent of it. It meant working in the dark jungle and it was hard labour for an hour or more. Then they suddenly came upon a large clearing where elephant grass stood as high as the men. They hacked through it and when space enough was cut, they stood quietly for a moment in the hot sunshine. The mules discovered something to eat. ‘Take fifteen minutes!’ Paz called. More butterflies – vivid red and yellows – rose into the air.

  Lucas went to see if Inez was all right. She’d seated herself on a patch of grass, taken off her pack and put down her rifle. She pointed out a border of wild orchids. The small white blooms had bright orange interiors. There were thousands of them. They made a long curve as if planted there by some dedicated gardener. It was curious to think that no human eye had seen them for at least a century.

  Lucas reached out and picked one perfect specimen. He inspected it with great interest. ‘What do you call these?’ he asked.

  She laughed. ‘Who knows? They say two thousand species of orchid have been identified growing in our country.’

  ‘Number two thousand and one,’ he said and put it into her hat.

  Some men took this opportunity to rearrange their burdens and their equipment. Combat jackets were rolled tight and tied to packs. They wet their mouths with water from their flasks. Lucas had forbidden them to drink. This was not because he feared a shortage of drinking water – he feared more the sudden onset of the rains – but because drinks of water would be likely to bring on cramps during the march. Angel Paz tied a sweatband round his forehead. His hair had grown and he was no longer self-conscious of his shaven head. In fact his appearance had brought him instant notoriety, for few men interrogated in Tepilo police headquarters came out anything less than crippled for life.

  After the short rest, the cutters moved to the far side of the meadow and began cutting again. They kept to the appointed formation: two cutters leading each file. This pleased Angel Paz and he waved happily to Santos to acknowledge his help. Soon after moving forward they stumbled upon the remains of a low stone wall. Paz said it must have marked the outer boundary of the old plantation. By keeping close to it they found a way through the secondary growth. Soon they were at a mound that might have been a house or a gate lodge in some former times. Despite their efforts there was no trace of a road to be found. It was strange to think that somewhere nearby there was probably a gigantic mansion. Its furnishings, from chandeliers to carpets, would by now have been devoured by the ravenous jungle.

  ‘Move on. Move on.’

  Now there was another downward gradient. It made for an abrupt descent. As they cautiously made their way between two huge rock-strewn spurs that were bathed in sunshine the jungle was in shadow. The vegetation was thinner here where sunlight was scarce and they could move at a brisk pace. A stream showed a way that was easy to follow.

  Angel Paz looked at a roughly drawn map and tried to estimate the distance they had done already. He’d resolved to encourage his men by estimating each day’s progress. A good march on the first day would give them something to aim for on every day of the journey.

  For half an hour the party followed the course of the mountain stream. The broken, rocky ground dictated the route, for there was no path on the other side of the water. The stream was not gentle. It raced over the rock and then, gurgling loudly, vanished underground to reappear again a few yards ahead. This land to the north of the winter camp had been mapped by the MAMista patrols over the last five years or so. Angel Paz’s map did not show the stream. As they marched on the path became more and more overgrown until it ended in a wall of rock. The stream would have to be crossed if they were to continue northwards. By this time the stream no longer went so conveniently underground. It had been joined by other watercourses. And it was not so evidently a stream.

  It was seven yards wide here and getting wider, and more precarious, all the time. It narrowed sometimes to gush between sharp granite rocks. Where it widened, the smooth stones over which it flowed were covered in a slimy green fungus. Paz stepped close to the edge and looked back uphill to see the white water tumbling down. It would be a miserable climb to retrace their steps all the way back to where it was an easy crossing.

  He halted the men. The crossing would provide a chance to practise for the more serious obstacles that lay ahead. ‘Should they remove their boots?’ Paz asked Lucas.

  ‘Boots and socks off,’ Lucas said. ‘This is not a patrol. The sooner they realize that the better.’

  Some of the more experienced men had plastic bags with them. They carried their footwear around their necks in the bags and were sure it was dry.

  The mules were sent first to be sure they got across. They complained in their hoarse and feeble way, and did everything they could to be difficult. It was their nature; the mule being a curious creature noted for both its obstinacy and its intelligence. The water was numbingly cold. For the men who formed a human chain by standing in the water it was painful. The food stores, the ammunition and the machine gun were passed from hand to hand. But the bed of the stream was slippery with moss and a man could not carry a burden and enjoy a steadying hand too. Tito – Novillo’s number two on the machine-gun team – was proudly carrying a container of machine-gun ammunition when he went sprawling. The ammunition went bouncing down the steep hillside and so did a box of dried fish.

  ‘You pack of goddamned idiots!’ Paz said. ‘I told you to take care. Where were you, comrade Santos?’

  ‘Helping with the mules,’ said Santos.

  ‘Goddamn it; stay with the men,’ Paz said. ‘Lucas! Lucas!’ he shouted. ‘Why weren’t you here to help?’

  Lucas, busy checking the foot of the man who had fallen, pretended not to hear.

  No one was seriously hurt but the ammunition and the fish had to be opened, dried and repacked. It took a long time and as Lucas discreetly pointed out to Inez, the crossing had been done without any reconnaissance of the other side of the stream. A handful of hostile men on the far bank could have caught them in midstream and cut them to pieces. It was an observation that Singer made too; but he made it to the world at large, loudly and forcibly with interlarded expletives.

  With feet dried, and a lesson learned, the party started off again. Paz looked at h
is map. Santos looked at it too. This stream was not marked on the map, but keeping to this route they would soon come to a river that merited a distinct thick pen line.

  They trudged on. The men were quiet now as fatigue bit into them. Even the more ebullient youngsters – like the eighteen-year-old twins – had begun to see what was in store. It was another gruelling two-hours’ trekking before they heard the sounds of the river. The mules perked up. Water attracted all living things. They heard birds and monkeys and there were sudden movements in the greenery underfoot.

  ‘There she is,’ Singer boomed. From the vantage point of his chair, and with no need to watch his footsteps, he was the first one to spot the water. In his fine bass voice he rendered, ‘He don’t plant ’taters, he don’t plant cotton, An dem dat plants ’em is soon forgotten; But ol’ man river he just keeps rollin’ along.’

  During his time in the camp such renderings had become Singer’s running gag. Now they also served to remind everyone that while they were sweating and straining their hostage was idle with breath to spare.

  Paz ignored Singer’s performance. He hurried to a break in the trees and looked at it through his field-glasses. At first sight the river did not seem as wide as he feared it might be. His relief was short-lived. What seemed to be the far bank proved, on closer inspection, to be a muddle of tree-covered islands. One served as a monkey colony. As the patrol arrived at the riverbank, there came from it a shrill chorus of fear and defiance that was amplified by the intervening flat water.

  The river flowed southwards. It had a long way to go, for this was one of a thousand such tributaries of the Amazon. Paz reasoned that it must narrow as they went farther north.

  Santos stared down at the water. It was frothy with a rich brown colour. It showed that somewhere between here and its source the rains had already started. He decided it was his duty to tell Paz, but as he went up to him Paz thought he was requesting orders.