The Hungry Blade

by Lawrence Dudley

  “I don’t know.”

  “It is good you don’t know.”

  “Oh, I don’t think so.”

  “No, it is. Artists—real artists, that is—are revolutionaries, rule breakers. We are always troublemakers, upsetting things, dangerous people. Do you know why?”

  “Hardly.”

  “Because an artist has to actually look at the world. When you do, you see things.”

  “As they are.”

  “Yes. Not the way you think they are supposed to be. Like Picasso and Braque twenty year ago, with fauvism and cubism.”

  “That ticked people off.”

  “It did! It was a new way of seeing the world. The world had already changed, only now people saw it.”

  Seeing. Yes, Hawkins thought. The images in the Guide to Mexico—that man was an illustrator, a sort of technician, not an artist, because he wasn’t looking. He couldn’t see what was all around him for what it was. Instead, he saw what he wanted to see.

  What am I seeing now? Hawkins thought. I know—Lilly, over at the Reforma. She started as a clerk, was handed cypher duties because there was no man to do it, now was, effectively, a clandestine agent after sneaking into a foreign country. And doing great. A year ago, utterly inconceivable. The very suggestion would’ve caused outrage. Imagine the indignation: Send a woman? Not up to it. Too delicate. We have to protect them. Natter-natter, blah-blah. A revolution, of sorts.

  “The war is shaking things up, changing things. I see that.”

  “We can shake things up without a war. That is the value of art.”

  They clinked glasses.

  “Then here’s to art, not war, help us see a better world.”

  “Yes. There’s something you should see tonight.”

  “What?”

  “An auction preview. Two more paintings have appeared.”

  “I’ll need to get one of my cameras. Come on.”

  Upstairs Riley began wandering his room again. Hawkins got his Minox from the suitcase.

  “That’s a camera?” He nodded. “Interesting things you have here, Hawkins. Guns. Cameras that look like cigarette lighters.” She noticed the beaker and excitedly ran over, plucking it up. “Where did you get my vase? I hope you didn’t pay much for it!”

  “I didn’t pay anything for it. You owned it once?”

  “No! I made it.”

  “What? You’re joking—”

  “No. Here.” She turned it on the stand, pointing, then picked it up. “See? Inside this small glyph? My initials. RE. They are very stylized, but it is my little mark. I always do that, it is my way of being honest with our past, but it is my little joke, too. Only the top experts at the Museo Nacional de Antropología will know it is not a real Mayan glyph, and they will be amused at my cleverness.”

  “But it looks so old—”

  “Yes, looks very old after you bury it in shit for a month.” She gestured with it, trying to hand it to him. Hawkins shrank back a bit. “Oh, it’s clean now! I won’t ask how you got it for free, Mr. Businessman.”

  “Good idea. Let’s go.”

  A few blocks down to La Roma again and Subastas del águila, another elegant old Porfirian-era house converted into an auction hall. People were milling around, looking especially at the two-star attractions, a Picasso and another Braque from the hoard in Bermuda. That accounted for all the missing works from the original forty. The sale was set for Friday night. There was no trace of Eckhardt and Falkenberg, however.

  Riley seemed to know half the people there. There were several more Mexican artists, all of whom seemed to be Riley’s friends, lounging around, warily musing over the foreign competition. Also several plump-faced American writers, talking loudly in English in one corner about the workers. Hawkins heard one say, “When I get back to the Columbia campus …” as the others sagely nodded. Riley pointed out three wan, hungry-looking men with hollow eyes who had come to Mexico City after fighting in Spain. A suave Mexican film director and his cameraman. Wealthy collectors in suits, obvious American bohemians in blue overalls living on the cheap in Mexico. An interesting mix. A tapping on his shoulder. Hawkins turned. General Corrialles had quietly come up behind him. He looked very concerned, frowning slightly, leaning forward.

  “Hawkins. Of course you would be here. Are you going to be bidding?”

  “Not if you are.”

  Corrialles relaxed, his posture shifting. “I see. Thank you.” A big smile.

  “You’re considering the Picasso and the Braque?”

  “Yes, naturally.”

  “They will end up in the Alpert Gallery anyway. I think it best you should add them to your collection, if you can, consign them to us all together.”

  “Agreed. It will be expensive but that is fair, and you’re right, they will still go to your gallery,” Corrialles said.

  And how else would we get them back to their rightful owners? Hawkins thought. Can’t have these things scattered to the winds. Further, neither I nor the Service has the budget to buy them. And if the general buys them, he will lose that much more money. Yes, let’s bankrupt the bastard, Hawkins thought. No money, no coup, no worries here and I can wrap this up and move on.

  “I’m curious about something. Where’d these paintings come from? Refugees? Could they have more?”

  “A good question. I will ask. They will dare not refuse.”

  Corrialles left for the office. Only a brief moment later, he was back. He looked angry, shocked, upset, or something, you could easily see it in his eyes, the way they snapped back and forth between him to the Braque and Picasso, teeth clenched.

  “A German gentleman named Bruno, whitish crew cut, the tip of his ear missing, that is all they know.”

  “Eckhardt.”

  “Yes.”

  “But not Falkenberg?”

  “No.”

  “There were empty spaces in those crates.”

  “I am thinking that, also.”

  “No matter now, I guess. We need to think about getting all of them to New York. I am worried about the security of rail, trucking. Also, it’s now August. The big autumn season in Manhattan is approaching very fast. Then there’s the war. Suppose something happens? Ship sinkings, a torpedoed liner, the US gets in the war.”

  “I see your point completely. Yes, we want to sell in a peacetime marketplace. We must not waste time. What do you have in mind?”

  “Are you open to flying them? I could charter a plane in California. I am thinking one of the new Douglas transports. A little pricey but well worth it.”

  “Agreed.” The general uneasily glanced around at the crowd. “A stinking collection of scum, isn’t it? We’ll have our work cut out for us. Please start making your arrangements.”

  Hawkins and Riley loitered a bit, talking. Riley seemed bored.

  “Don’t you like looking at art?” Hawkins said.

  “No, I’d rather make it. Let’s go back to Coyoacán. I want to start painting you.”

  “All right. I’ll meet you out there. I have to stop and check for messages first.”

  -60-

  Most urgent, it said.

  Lilly was already waiting in a booth when he arrived at the Reforma. The phone rang the instant he settled in his seat—by now she’d memorized all the numbers in the bank of phone booths.

  “Big flash in from W.” She hesitated. He looked over. Through both glass doors he could see the concern on her face. She had something she knew he wasn’t going to like, easy to tell.

  “Go ahead.”

  “Your reports have gone all the way back to London. They are extremely pleased with your destruction of the Nazi plot to lure the United States into a Mexican invasion. Commendations are coming, all that. Who knows, you could get an OBE out of this.” Her tone was bright, almost like she was buttering h
im up, and knew it, and knew he knew, trying to blunt what was coming next, dreading, postponing the coming moment, however briefly.

  “That and a dime will get me a cup of coffee. If I live to drink it. And it’ll be classified, anyway, so who cares? Go, on, what is it?”

  “They want to help General Corrialles.”

  “Do what?”

  “Overthrow the government.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Those are your orders. They like the idea of a coup. It isn’t only London. Ottawa, too, and international business interests in the States they’re in contact with. They all want their expropriated Mexican properties back, the oil fields, railroads, everything. If Corrialles was willing to return them, and apparently he was, or is, along with the lands that were taken, they’re perfectly congenial with a military government here provided it’s friendly to Britain, the Empire and Commonwealth, and not Germany.”

  “Well, hell, how are we supposed to do—”

  “Corrialles has cleared the titles, at least superficially enough, so that they can arrange a real sale at Parke-Bernet.”

  “What! No—”

  “The paintings will go through the Alpert Gallery to auction, then the money will go back from the Alpert Gallery to Corrialles’s front company to fund the coup.”

  “We’re not going to have them impounded?”

  “No.”

  “Hold them for their owners? Return them after the war?”

  “No.”

  “But the Geneva Convention—”

  “They don’t care. They want to get back the assets they lost here.”

  “My god, Lilly—we’re refusing to deal with Hitler because of the nature of his regime, but now we’re not only going to deal with Corrialles, another would-be Franco, another Fascist, but also a dictator friendly to Nazism—”

  “I know, I know—”

  “Help him seize power? It makes no sense.”

  “I suppose not. But, Roy—”

  “Yes?”

  “I think this is personal to W, too. Some of his companies were hit hard. Be careful.”

  “Has he forgotten? Only weeks ago, we risked all to defend these other countries—Norway, France, Belgium, Holland, nearly lost the whole damn army. But now, we’re going to turn around and throw away Mexico? What about them, their independence, their freedom? How are they any different than the French or the Dutch? If we do this, what’s the difference between us and the Germans?”

  “We’re fighting for our survival now. We weren’t then, before France fell. I’m guessing the seized properties here will all be mortgaged to the hilt the moment we—the Allies—get them back. That’ll buy more war material from the States. It’s all quite serious, in that sense.”

  “I don’t care—”

  “It’s all cash-and-carry with the Yanks. They’re slowly picking us clean while they make up their minds. If that’s what it is. Britain’s losing everything it built up over three centuries.”

  “I thought we were holding.”

  “We are. Militarily. For the moment.”

  “What the bloody hell—”

  “I—I—” She heavily sighed and stopped. He leaned up to the glass, watching her. She almost seemed on the edge of tears. “Yes, this is an amazing place. Being here, doing this, it’s been a dream. This—it’s terrible. There’ll probably be fighting in the streets. It’s going to be a mess.”

  “A mess? The civil war twenty years ago killed a million people, and they didn’t have the new popular militias Cárdenas created. That’s not a mess, that’s a catastrophe. They have no idea what they could be unleashing. And that’s not supposed to bother Washington? That there could be security issues for them if the country breaks up like the last time? Warlords all over? Another Villa raiding Texas? Just the chaos, the refugees spilling across the border—millions of people, any of that could bring the Americans in, tie up the US Army—”

  “They want a response soon.”

  “Fine. Since there’s no real station here, send them this …” She began writing on her pad as he slowly parsed it out. “Coup likely to result in civil war between Corrialles, his conservative loyalists and new popular militias. Army could fracture, as well. Previous civil war, revolution, killed one million people, devastated country. Effective breakup of Mexico into warlord-controlled zones likely, resulting in US intervention like Pershing mission to catch Pancho Villa. Breakup could—no—would create opportunities for further Nazi subversion. Hitler likely to start soliciting, aiding individual warlords, seeking another Franco, similar to recent Spanish Civil War. All would distract US from aid, support and resources for British and anti-Nazi cause, also tying up US naval, army and air assets, possibly for years—no strike that—with certainty for years to come. The Americans won’t be able to come in and go out, they’ll have to occupy the country! Mexico’s mountainous—ideal conditions for guerrilla war. My assessment is risk of these eventualities is utterly unacceptable. Request reconsideration of these factors and reconfirm previous order.”

  “Oh! Good, good, this is very good, Roy, I’ll get this right out.”

  Hawkins sat numbly in the booth, watching her fly down the aisle, almost running to the elevator. His head felt empty, sucked clean, nothing but the distant sound of traffic out on the Paseo.

  -61-

  A man was in the aisle, irritably looking for an empty phone booth. Hawkins vacated his, leaving the hotel, back out onto the Paseo de la Reforma. He stood in the warm sun, gazing up and down the busy street, his inner motor idling, half-seeing and not seeing. Instead of turning back to the Imperial, an urge overtook him—perhaps to get away from that, or what it represented?—and he began rapidly walking westward along the Paseo, looking in the shops, the cafés and offices.

  The people were busy, happy, walking along chattering away, or determinedly heading here and there on their business. They seemed so normal. Little do they know what’s coming, Hawkins thought.

  After a short distance he reached a large square. In the center was a statue of an Indian warrior or chief. Cuauhtémoc, he realized. When Corrialles had been interrogating the men in the hangar, he’d demanded to know who the last emperor was. The fool answered Maximilian. Cuauhtémoc! Corrialles shouted. Maximilian was an invader! And so he was. That man came to Mexico knowing little or nothing about it, like the artist of that dumb guidebook, who could not see what was right in front of him.

  Cortés, the Spanish conqueror of Mexico, murdered Cuauhtémoc. Hawkins had had several idle days on the Santa Lopez, and he’d busied himself reading about the country before he arrived. As he gazed at the statue he suddenly remembered Cuauhtémoc’s last words, carefully transcribed by one of Cortés’s men, who was horrified by the crime.

  May God demand justice from you, as it was taken from me when I entrusted myself to you in my city of Mexico!

  Justice was denied. So much injustice in this country’s past, Hawkins thought, and there’s about to be more.

  What do I see here? A pleasant, sophisticated street. But … he closed his eyes and imagined the scene, seeing with his mind’s eye, not what was in front of him, the way Riley would have it, but what was to be. Corrialles’s tanks would be useless against a real invader—well, that would’ve been the Americans—but on a broad avenue like this? The machine guns would rip up and down the Paseo, the tanks would roll along, firing into the side streets, clearing them, the people tumbling down, another bloody sacrifice.

  A few more paces brought him to a small park. He sat on a bench watching the traffic swirl around the statue. I’m still in that shut-down, professional mode, he thought, keeping myself safe. Then, with a start, he realized, Not only does that keep me safe from others. It keeps me safe from myself. Should I? Or at the minimum, should I now? But what he mainly felt was confusion.

  I came here to fight Nazis �
�� I won … I thought I won … What have I won …?

  A spark fired and he sprang up and turned the corner, briskly walking up an avenue away from Cuauhtémoc, head down.

  How did this happen? I only wanted … Everything had seemed so clear, days, no an hour ago. Only an hour. I knew what I wanted, what I was doing, because I knew who and what I was fighting. Hitler. The Nazis. All I wanted was to fight Hitler. Stop Eckhardt, Falkenberg. Beat them. But … now there’ll be a war, more massacres here. Those rich fools, whatever they get back will be in ruins by the time this is all over. Aust was right on that, the companies are greedy and stupid.

  What have I done … what the hell happened … rumbling over and over in his mind.

  He reached a large intersection. Several blocks down was a colossus, a large dome on massive arches, a good twenty stories high: the Monument to the Revolution. They built this because that revolution mattered, Hawkins thought. He walked up, going and going, then stopped at the edge of the plaza, staring at it. A tour of schoolchildren noisily passed him, heading toward it. He watched them go, more thoughts incoherently tumbling in his mind.

  What will happen to them? Blood on the streets. Blood on them?

  May God demand justice from you …

  What now?

  Riley. Riley’s waiting for me, he thought. Do I dare tell her, what kind of picture will that paint?

  -62-

  There were several more large canvases around Riley’s garage studio. Hawkins stood in front of one, trying to think of something to say, trying to think at all. Or maybe it was that he didn’t want to think, or wanted to think of something, anything else. It was going to be an agonizing wait to hear back from W at his headquarters in New York, and London, he knew that, vaguely. Riley’s paintings suddenly crowded everything out of mind.

  “Don’t you want to wait for better light?” he said.

  “No, this is fine, I’ll do the base now, work the color later.” She was getting her palette ready, squeezing out oils. Riley’s paintings were modern, in a slightly abstracted style. Yet, at the same time there was a strong sense of tradition, the subject matter all people, not things or abstract shapes. And they weren’t types, either, like the socialist realist art of the Soviet Union or the racial archetypes favored by Hitler or Mussolini. A finished painting was crowded with people, a procession through history, a Mayan noblewoman, then a Joan of Arc perhaps, a crusader, all of them sitting in the back of a taxi with a woman cab driver smoking a cigar. A closer look. No, he thought, they’re all the same woman, and it’s Riley.