The Hungry Blade

by Lawrence Dudley

  “My god, that’s extraordinary,” Hawkins said.

  “Yes. It is. And there’s more. Corrialles told his son he expects to get their lost lands back. Boasting about it. From some other references in the letter they think Corrialles has also made contact with various foreign business interests that had properties in Mexico that were expropriated and want to get them back. Those businesses will also support a coup. It’s not clear if any money is involved in those cases, that may only represent support, for instance, international pressure to recognize the regime. W thinks the likely success of a coup is very high. Canadian Army intelligence in Ottawa concurs. They are apparently more aware of what goes on in the hemisphere than London, army officers exchange visits and the like. They report President Cárdenas has been steadily professionalizing the officer corps, but there are still many army officers, particularly in the senior ranks, who came from the landed classes and want the return of their big family estates that were lost to Cárdenas’s land reforms. Let’s see, what else … Oh yes, Corrialles expects the blessing and support of the Catholic Church. W says that makes sense, it lost lands to the reform, too, and it’s opposed to the new secular school system. It wants to control all education and reverse the Mexican Revolution’s anticlericalism.”

  “They want to restore the old feudal society.”

  She thought a second. “I guess that’s right, yes. All of them. You have orders. It goes on, ‘A military coup and a military government would be highly conservative, though not necessarily explicitly Fascist.’ ”

  “Similar to Franco in Spain.”

  “Exactly, very much like Franco.”

  “Corrialles admires Franco. That’s in my coming report.”

  “Ah. Of course. W goes on:

  Such a regime would be friendly to Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, a base of covert operations in the Western Hemisphere and a threat to British and Commonwealth security. Mexico is also highly influential in Central and South America, leading to more military takeovers. Goal is creating Nazi sphere of influence in the Western Hemisphere. You are to take whatever measures necessary to break up plot at all cost. Seize contraband artworks if you can or destroy them completely to deny funding to the Nazis if you must.”

  “Destroy them?”

  “Those are your orders.”

  “Destroy them? The things we saw in Bermuda?”

  She hesitated, then a barely audible, “Yes.”

  “My god—they can’t be serious.”

  “I know.” There was a very long break, from both of them, as that sank in. “It’s—it’s—it’s terrible … what you may have to do. But—Roy—what—” she sighed heavily. “But you must do your duty if you have to.”

  “Yes. There may be no alternative.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “Don’t be. It may not come to that. One thing at a time.”

  “Yes. One at a time. Do you have a report?”

  “Yes.” He read it off quickly to her, pausing for the faint um-hum to go on: The trip to Tlaxcala. Corrialles, his estate, his church gallery. Obvious criminal looting of archaeological treasures. An assessment of Corrialles. Reaction about bases. The arrival of Eckhardt and Falkenberg. The tension between them. Another gallery. Falkenberg’s worried comments on the air war over Britain. His raid on Aust’s office. Eckhardt and Falkenberg were behind the flight school. Finally the weird appearance of the Rousseau.

  “Fascinating, Roy. We’re having quite the adventure, aren’t we?”

  “Join the navy, see the world.”

  “That’s it. Only no water up here in the mountains.”

  “How’s your fellow?”

  “Still sitting and waiting for the Germans.”

  “No waiting for us.”

  “No.”

  They both hung up.

  -44-

  Hawkins sat back, and it all began to sink in. He left the Hotel Reforma, walking back up the Paseo to the Hotel Imperial. Then a spark lit. Without warning.

  Corrialles, Hawkins thought. That bastard! He wants to overthrow the government? Him and his kind? Stage a coup? Bloody greedy bastard wants to risk another civil war here to get his lands back? His feudal privileges? Warped sense of “guiding” the little people? That’s what this is all about? Play footsie with Nazi Germany to do that? Become an ally with them? And … the people those bastards murdered back there to get their hands on those paintings? The people they probably have to kill here?

  Then he thought of the people in the square listening to Cárdenas, the tears in Riley’s eyes, the cab driver with his hand over his heart. That bent-over farmer, the women pulling those carts. What about them? he thought. The people in those hovels outside the city, next to the tracks in Veracruz? What about them? The sign in front of the new school in Río Frío, El Presidente Cárdenas? What about him? Lying in a pool of blood. No doubt on how that would work out. If Corrialles shrank from it, Eckhardt would happily oblige. The fact Cárdenas abolished the death penalty would not spare him. It might even increase the passion to kill him, to justify their own bloodlust. The ease and speed Corrialles shot that bull. And what he said about the Aztecs and the corrida—more and more killing, an addictive drug, more and more blood.

  Corrialles wants to be the Mexican Franco. Admires him. What would he do to win? How many people was he willing to kill? How far would he go? The civil war in Spain slaughtered half a million. That was only part of it. The tortures—whenever the “loyalists” captured a Republican-held town, they systematically raped every woman they could drag out and then marched through the town with their victims’ underpants on their bayonets. Rule by terror.

  He turned and instead of heading back to the hotel, headed for his car.

  Rage. Sheer rage, building and building. Blood surging behind his eyes, his carefully controlled professional demeanor blasted to bits by the heat, forgotten, gone out of mind. It was too much. He couldn’t sustain it a moment more. He didn’t think rage, he suddenly was rage itself—hot, frenzied, ready to kill. He started jogging for the car, got in and revved it up, darting into traffic, cutting off a bus, horns blaring, racing out of town, toward the mountains, the passes and Tlaxcala and the Hacienda Cuauhtlatzacuillotl.

  Stop this madness right now, he thought. Do what someone should’ve done to Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, years ago. Bullet in the head, right between the eyes. Fine with killing? See how you like it.

  An hour out of town he began climbing into the mountains, the cool air rushing in the windows. He began settling, thinking how to do it, how to get to Corrialles. Then he realized, There’s no guarantee Corrialles is there. He might be back in the city. Then he thought, His men were all around. He’s a general, he commands troops, lots of them. A few more minutes on, Hawkins thought of the painting Riley found that morning. What the hell is going on there? he thought, and pulled over to the side of the road.

  The general can’t do this alone. There are others who have to join him, Hawkins thought, have to be. How many conspirators are there? Are Eckhardt, all the other Nazis, not merely Falkenberg, but the armed Gold Shirts in the street outside the Zocalo, are they dependent on Corrialles? Or could Eckhardt and Falkenberg merely turn to the next would-be Franco? If I kill Corrialles, what happens next? Other than possibly tipping them off?

  I don’t know enough, he realized.

  He turned the car around and hurried back down the mountain, the lights of Mexico City glistening before him.

  -45-

  Since there was no commercial service at the airfield, the Cuauhtémoc Academia was dark and locked at night, the dark stretching for miles, only a simple padlock on the gate, which yielded to his picks in seconds. Hawkins drove around the buildings looking for cars or trucks—only tractors to tow the planes and refueling tankers. No people about. The biplane trainers were neatly parked in rows behind the Junkers trimotors,
canvas covering their cockpits. The valuable high-performance planes were locked inside the hangars. No bothering with that, Hawkins thought, nor the tower. Instead he parked behind a tanker truck between a pair of hangars and slipped around to the back door.

  Obviously there was no alarm system, no bells on the outside—who was around to hear, anyway?—and apparently no phone lines. A large connecting conduit was there, but a thick bundle of loose wires dangled from the top of the pole. Presumably the field was too far out of town for phone service, although there was electricity. Another easy lock to pick. Inside he walked down the corridor, looking in at what appeared to be fairly normal classrooms filled with desks and chairs. He glanced through one, quickly flashing his light. Elevation maps of Mexico and Central America. Nothing special.

  Second room, quite normal too. Charts on climbing, banking, using the rudder with large arrows showing the results of control actions. But there was an odd cabinet in the back, quite large, covered with the crinkly black leatherette material used on scientific and industrial instruments. It was designed to open up down the center. He flipped the chrome latches back and swung out the doors. Inside was a complete airplane cockpit, with a seat that rolled back revealing instruments, a stick and rudders. He drew the seat back and sat down.

  No ordinary cockpit, he thought. Jammed with dozens of gauges, switches, indicators … What the hell was all this? To one side was a big cylinder with a yellow hose out the top, on the other a wheel-like reel. In front a blizzard of controls, turn and bank indicators, a compass, a clock, an altimeter, the word “Achtung” in a couple of places—there, the word “liter,” that must be fuel, two marked “C”—centigrade, temperature. Several things he couldn’t figure out.

  He looked up several inches. A piece of clear plate glass extended from a gray oblong box. He flicked a switch on the side. The glass plate lit from below. In the center was a circle and crosshairs. He stared at it, taking it in, before leaning in to peek through.

  A gunsight.

  He looked down at the stick. It had a button on the top and buttons on the side. For guns.

  There, he thought, down on the floor, a paper folded like a map. He picked it up and opened it. It was a map of the cockpit, with everything annotated in Spanish. One at the end didn’t need translation: MG 151 Canon.

  Cannon? he thought. Cannon? One thing he knew, the old Arado fighter he saw had light machine guns, all the planes a few years ago did. A 20 mm cannon meant only one thing. This was not a simulator for any old plane, this was a mock-up of the latest thing, the new Messerschmitt, the Bf 109. The planes attacking over the Channel this morning.

  He threw the chart back on the cockpit floor, climbed out and paced up and down, before slamming it shut. What on earth, why on earth, was this damn thing here? What was the point of training a group of Mexican students on planes they were never likely to see?

  Were the Nazis making promises to Corrialles and his supporters? Hawkins thought. Money, of course. That was where the artworks came in. They needed money to pay people off, reward allegiance, cover expenses. Even a coup presumably needed a budget. Perhaps they could also send some weapons, small arms, machine guns, explosives, smuggle them in the way the paintings were smuggled. But airplanes the size of the Messerschmitt? No, absurd, there was no smuggling things like that. They couldn’t be flown. It was too far. They’d have to be crated, fuselage in one large box, wings in two others and then carefully reassembled here by skilled mechanics. No small or easy matter. And why a school? Why not send “volunteers” the way Hitler and Mussolini did in Spain? Corrialles was an experienced military commander, he would have to know that.

  Damn, anyway, I need to get pictures of all this, Hawkins thought. He quickly went out to the car and returned with his Rolleiflex and a box of flashbulbs, popping off a couple of photos.

  Hawkins moved to another pair of classrooms. Nothing much of interest, like the first, from the charts and wall posters, weather instruction seemed to be going on in this one. However, in the fourth room there were a series of low locked cabinets against the back wall.

  Inside were two sets of manuals. One shelf held the original German set, the one below the Spanish language versions. He checked the volumes on each end: Maschinenhandbuch Für den Bf 109 and Manual del Motor Para el Bf 109. They were thick and heavy. He skimmed through the German version: a complete engine repair manual with photos and diagrams, very detailed.

  He snapped a picture of the title page, pushed that back in place, pulled another. Radio repair. Another, instruments. And so on. The cabinets held complete sets of service and repair manuals for the Messerschmitt. In the last classroom on the end he found the final piece: a massive engine sitting on a heavy steel frame, surrounded by towering tool cases. He counted the spark plugs. Twelve cylinders. On top in white were the letters: DB 601. Daimler-Benz, he realized. The engine for Bf 109. That rated another picture.

  In short, the Cuauhtémoc Academia de Vuelo was a somewhat small but reasonably complete training program for military pilots and ground crew. Neat and clean, professional, most likely not very different than a classroom back in the Reich, or maybe in Spain, now that Franco ruled it. That’s probably how the Germans got started on translating those manuals, Hawkins thought. They were able to get plenty of Messerschmitts through Italy to Spain and into the hands of the Condor Legion. Now Franco’s Spanish Air Force had those planes.

  He glanced around the classroom. On the wood rack under a chair. One of the students had left a magazine. He pulled it out. Los Dorados was on the cover. acción revolucionaria mexicanista. The Gold Shirts, the violent gun-toting thugs in the street off the Zocalo.

  Is Eckhardt recruiting from the ranks of his local Fascist allies? Hawkins thought. Why, was the question.

  -46-

  There was a final room on the end. Hawkins glanced in, flashing his light around. Several large drafting tables. He started to move on. An inner instinct brought him back. He reached up, pulling the chain on the light over the near table. It lit a large half-finished diagram. He puzzled over it a moment. It’s an airport, he realized. Not this one, though, bigger. Very detailed plan. Parallel runways. A compass point north. Intersecting taxiways and cross runways. Hangars. Tower. All carefully annotated in Spanish. Quite a few offices. A normal airport, more or less?

  But there were many other buildings. Near the runway, a small building labeled Cabaña del Piloto—all right, that obviously meant “pilot’s building.” Along the runways, around the buildings there were long narrow structures indicated with dashes, all labeled Foso, with one on the end labeled Foso del Ataque Aéreo. Air-raid trenches?

  Farther away an ascending series of buildings in rows, like a hierarchy: Cubierta del Oficial, Cubierta del Suboficial, Cubierta Alistada, and finally, off to one side, a much bigger house, Comandante Bajo. Okay, that was obvious: quarters for officers, noncoms and enlisted men, and the big house, commandante meant “base commander.” Around the whole area were circles labeled Artillería Antiaérea. Artillery?

  This is not a civilian airport, Hawkins realized. It’s a military one. And it’s not merely a field, a landing strip, but a complete military airbase with all the latest features, not only for training, but a frontline facility like the RAF bases in southern England with trenches, AA emplacements, ammo bunkers, aid stations, the works, ready for war. In the corner, under a paper clip and a note, he found a legend: fuerza aérea mexicana, Mexican Air Force, the name of what he presumed was a city or town and Nuevo León, a Mexican state near Texas. An arrow pointing southeast was labeled Monterrey. Pinned around the edge of the drafting table were aerial photographs and a topographical map of the region.

  Over to the side stood a huge map case with large flat and shallow drawers with a chain padlocked through the drawer handles. That was a joke, Hawkins had it off in seconds. He began checking the drawers. Some were labeled Fuerza Aérea, others Armada�
�navy. There didn’t seem to be any drawers for the army—perhaps they had those already. He began pulling out the drawers and checking the contents.

  As he went down through the drawers he counted plans for at least fifteen airbases circling the country, from Yucatán and Veracruz in the south, to Baja California and Sonora in the north then around to Michoacán in the southwest, with several around the capital.

  Down at the bottom, the Y ’s, he found a thick set of finished engineering blueprints and architectural drawings. He brought that back to the drafting table and settled in on the stool, going through them.

  Under one of a general site plan, he found an engineering blueprint for a pair of doors mounted in a cliff face, designed to swing out. Another revealed an interior plan: a canal or channel dug into a cliff face and extending out into the ocean. Walkways lined the channel with service and supply tunnels to the side, connecting to workshops. Overhead a large traveling crane mounted on tracks was set into the side of the artificial cavern. Forward, toward land, was another for an underground reservoir, with a road and connected pumping station on the surface. He found an overhead plan of the complex. There was a series of dotted lines in the channel or well, in the shape of a submarine.

  Hawkins had heard about things like this, of course. A giant revetment, or bunker, on the coast that a submarine or U-boat could sail into and shelter from attack, until it sallied out on a new mission. Very possible. But also very expensive. An enormous excavation, immense amounts of concrete and steel. And a series of airbases to cover them would be required, and probably batteries of coastal guns. The major powers could afford such emplacements, but Mexico? Well, maybe it could. But as far as Hawkins knew, Mexico didn’t have any submarines, at least not yet. He moved another light over to the drafting table, made it nice and bright, and took a series of pictures of the airbases and the submarine installation.