by Gavin Lyall
I was looking at her in the general way you look at Caneton a l’orangeeven when you know you’re going to have the hamburger, when she caught my eye, came straight over and asked:‘Capitán Carr?’
‘Uh… just Keith Carr. You’re Miss… ah…’ I tried to remember just what Diego’s namehad been, after all.
But she stuck out a slim brown hand and said:‘Juanita Jiminez.’
I just waved my head up and down. At a distance she’d been attractive; close up, she had the punch of a thirty-millimetre cannon. I was trying to work out how this girl could be Diego’s sister. Well, maybe they had the same dark hair and big dark eyes, and if you had hauled Diego’s stomach up eighteen inches and split it into two… Her centre of gravity was definitely forward. It’s a good thing on aeroplanes and women both.
I came awake abruptly and said: ‘There’s a company car outside. If you’ll point out your luggage, I’ll put it aboard and the driver’ll take you wherever you’re staying.’
‘But you’re taking me there, aren’t you?’ The dark eyes looked infinitely sad.
‘Am I? Where?’
‘The Shaw Park.’ Spanish-style, she rolled several imaginary R’s at the end of Shaw. ‘It’s beyond Kingston, I think.’
J.B. might at least have told me. ‘It’s sixty miles beyond-‘ Then I started thinking what else I’d rather do that evening than ride sixty miles over the hills pointing out the sights to Miss Jiminez.
I nodded. ‘Of course.’ I went to collect her luggage. Perhaps she had owned it already, but it looked very much as if she’d bought it especially for the trip. It was black, brand new – and crocodile skin. The two cases, with their stainless-steel fittings, must have cost a good £500.
When I got it back to base, the party had grown: the inspector and the sergeant. I still couldn’t remember their names, so I just said hopefully: ‘You’ve met, have you?’
The inspector coughed and said heavily: ‘You’re looking after Miss… ah… Jiminez, I gather.’
‘That’s right.’
‘I was just asking what she could tell us about her brother’s… ah… activities. It might give us a lead.’
‘I understand, Coronel,‘she said sadly, ‘that he was murdered by gangsters from the República. Have you caught them yet?’
He coughed awkwardly. ‘Well… no, not yet, quite. Trouble is, Mr Carr didn’t find your brother’s… ah… your brother until twenty-four hours later.’ He gave me a look which made the whole thing my fault.
She looked at me soulfully. ‘And you were teaching him to fly, Capitán?’
‘That’s right.’ I looked back at the inspector. ‘Although I didn’t know what it was for.’
She said: ‘He was very devoted to his father’s cause.’
Well, maybe – after women and his Jaguar E-type. But I stayed shut up. After a time, the inspector said gallantly: ‘Well, a man should be-‘ then caught the sergeant’s eye, and added: ‘Depends on what cause, of course.’
Nobody said anything and we had a bit of rich dark Spanish gloom. Then the inspector said: ‘So you can’t think of anybody your brother knew particularly in Kingston?’
‘Only Capitán Carr, Coronel.’
He grunted. I noticed he wasn’t objecting to the’Coronel’title. After a little more gloom, he said: ‘If you want to make arrangements for your… ah… brother, I see no objections. I’ve already spoken to the coroner and since there’s obviously no possible dispute over the… ah… cause of death, he’s been released for – well, you can make any arrangements you like. The inquest may. be delayed.’
And I could guess why. After three days of international politics and American journalists over a murder he’d probably decided was unsolvable, the last thing he’d want would be to remind everybody about it by staging an inquest in a hurry. This one was an inquest that would take up five minutes of a wet Monday morning in the middle of the next banana-loading strike.
‘Please call on me at any time,’ he finished – a little hopefully, I thought. She gave him a vast sad smile and he rocked, lifted his hand to salute, remembered he was in plain clothes, and tottered away with the sergeant loping after him.
She said contemptuously:‘They will never catch them.’
I didn’t think so myself, but all I did was make soothing noises and start humping her cases towards the exit.
Around the Palisadoes road and through Kingston itself I, kept talking and pointing out the sights – mostly to give my hands something to do apart from grab. The back seat there, with her tight skirt riding up a little beyond loud-hailing distance of her knees, was definitely a one-thought situation.
She listened, nodded, and smiled politely until Tom Pringle’s Cotton Tree on the Spanish Town road finally exhausted my local knowledge. Then she said calmly: ‘Now you will fly the bomber instead of Diego?’
I jumped and looked quickly at the driver. But I’d forgotten that it was one of those old-fashioned long Cadillacs some Jamaican car-hire firms use – with a glass partition behind the driver. Closed.
Still, our security didn’t sound too good if the news had already spread as far as Caracas.
I asked cautiously: ‘Why d’you think that?’
Her eyes got wide, and maybe a little disappointed. ‘But of course, Capitán-I assumed it. You will want to revenge Diego.’
Well – that or get my Dove back or something. I nodded.
She smiled, then said thoughtfully: ‘It is very good. It is the classic use of air power, as your Lord Trenchard said. To destroy die enemy air force on the ground.’
I said: ‘Huh?’
‘Indeed, it is the most pure of all tactics. Captain Liddell Hart wrote it: “fixing combined with die decisive manoeuvre”. You are fixing the enemy’s attention with your frontal attack, my father is manoeuvring on the flanks, one might say, to bring about Clausewitz’s “decisive battle”.’
This time I didn’t say anydiing. I just let my jaw dangle against my chest. After a time she noticed my expression had changed from the hungry leer which I’d been wearing ever since we met, and asked: ‘You know Clausewitz, of course, Capitán?’
‘He was die German general who… well, it was in Napoleon’s time, wasn’t it?’
‘He wrote On War,’ she said, a little austerely.
‘Yes, I expect he did.’ Not quite my brightest and best remark, but I was still going through die disorientated feeling you might get if die aeroplane had suddenly decided to fly backwards.
‘But you must have read his books in your Air Force. He has been much misunderstood, but he is still the basis of all strategy.’
I nodded helpfully. ‘I’m sure diey read him at dietop of the RAF but I was pretty close to die bottom. They didn’t consult me much on strategy.’
She frowned. ‘Was that why you left your Air Force?’
I waved a helpless hand. ‘Look -1 was just a pilot. A bullet. The air marshals pulled the trigger and I went where I was pointed. That’s all.’
But that wasn’t quite the impression I’d planned to give. I’d been diinking more along die lines of The Dashing Debonair Aviator Flying Fearless Into The Eye Of The Hurricane.
The hell with you, Clausewitz. I hope your tent leaked oncampaigns and your publishers cheated you on royalties.
‘Now that,’ I said, pointing, ‘is the original church of Spanish Town. You should see some of the inscriptions on the gravestones from the plague days-‘
‘Your Lord Nelson was here before he became a Lord, I think,’ she said.
‘Yes, that’s down at Port Royal-‘
‘He was not a strategist, of course, but a very good tactician.’
I thought of asking whether she meant Trafalgar or Lady Hamilton, but decided not to. I said: ‘At one time, Spanish Town was the capital of-‘
She said: ‘Only the Nile and Copenhagen were his important battles of course. In each he used the factor of surprise in the most interesting way…’
In the next
hour I learnt a lot about Nelson. I also picked up some good stuff about Marlborough, the Schließen Plan, the two Moltkes, Foch, and Hannibal.
Somehow, it still wasn’t the car drive I’d planned.
NINETEEN
It was twilight when we pulled into Shaw Park. J.B.‘s Avantiand Whitmore’s white station wagon were parked there, so I leant on the bell of Apartment C.
Luiz opened the door. He started to smile at me, then caught the view over my shoulder and went into shock. It was nice to see it happen to a professional.
He recovered quickly and made an elegant gesture that just happened to shove me out of the Uneof sight.‘Señorita Jiminez? I am called Luiz Monterrey. I knew your father. May I express my sorrow at the death of your brother? I should wear mourning’ – he was still in film clothes; he plucked distastefully at the torn, smudged frilly shirt – ‘but an actor must wear mourning in his heart. That, I do. But youmust be tired, please-‘ I was suddenly alone on the doorstep.
He was a pro, all right.
I hauled the luggage out of the car to release the driver for other company business, and walked into Apartment Cmyself. And straight into the muzzle of a gun.
I recognised it as one of the lever-action rifles they’d used in the river-crossing scene; the face behind it seemed vaguely familiar from the film-set, too.
‘Blanks, I trust?’ I said.
‘You could find out – the hard way.’ The face was grim and steady. ‘Now say somep’n about who you are and why.’
J.B. came around the corner of the passage. ‘All right, Doug – he’s one of ours.’
The rifle drooped towards the floor – a little disappointed, I thought.
‘After Diego,’ J.B. explained, ‘the Boss Man started taking a few precautions. He’s licenced to have real ammunition for that thing in case he wants to go hunting alligators down on the Black River. Come on through.’
I dumped the luggage just inside the door, and said to the man Doug: ‘You’re in a bad position there: coming in with the light behind me I could have been Santa Clausor Fidel Castro. Either way, you could have made a bad mistake.’
‘Only if you was Santy Glaus,’ he said calmly.
In the living-room facing over the patio and beach, Whitmore was offering Miss Jiminez a drink and she was saying she’d rather have a wash and brush up first. J.B. led her off through the bedroom.
Whitmore waved at me, then sprawled himself down on the sofa. ‘Buy yourself a drink, fella.’ The room was littered with bottles, glasses, dirty plates – they’d obviously just finished dinner – and yellow pages of shooting scripts. I started searching.
‘Hell,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘that’s quite a piece of tail you brought in.’
Luiz over-acted an anguished wince.
Whitmore grinned at him. ‘If you wanna go riding withouta. horse, fella, I ain’t competing.’
‘You gringo peasant.’
Whitmore grinned even wider. Then he turned back to me, ‘How’s this aeroplane look?’
Luiz shook his head. ‘A girl like that comes in – and the man wants to talk about aeroplanes.’
‘I already said my piece about her and you didn’t seem to like it.’
J.B. came back. ‘Didn’t know what I was letting you in for, Carr. That’s quite a piece of-‘
‘My God,’ Luiz said, ‘Americans.’
J.B. looked at him, surprised, then smiled wickedly. ‘You really getting hot pants about her, Luiz? I’ll get you a pass key for her room.’
‘What about this aeroplane?’ Whitmore roared.
By then I’d found myself an unopened bottle of Red Stripe and half a plate of not-quite-cold prawns and rice. I swallowed and said: ‘I’ve had a couple of men working on it at Port Antonio – I paid their fares from Kingston each day, if that’s all right – and North American sent in some parts yesterday, so…’ I gave him a fairly full progress report. It added up to the hope that the Mitchell would be ready for an air-test the next afternoon.
‘After that,’ I said, ‘you can start filming as soon as you can fit cameras. But she’ll need some more work before she does a bombing raid – if you still want to go on with that.’
He stared. ‘Hell, yes. What’s the matter?’
‘Nothing,’ I shook my head. ‘Just – just every time I think of it, the crazier it sounds.’
‘It’ll work, won’t it?’
‘Yes, I think it’ll work.’
‘Okay then. So what needs doing to her?’
I listed the items. I wanted to rip out all the excess weight -those seats and central heating in the rear, the bomb-bay tank. I’d learnt, from gossip around the airport, that some Mitchells had been fitted with such tanks in the war, so I hoped that it had been normal to leave the bomb rails and shackles in above them. If so, all I’d need to do was make sure they worked and then rewire the release mechanism.
Luiz said thoughtfully: ‘You will have to work carefully, my friend. If the generals hear we are re-converting the aeroplane to a bomber…’ he shrugged.
‘She’s in the script now,’ Whitmore said. ‘We can cover a lot of the work as dolling her up for the picture.’
Luiz looked doubtful.
I said: ‘Frankly, I don’t think there’s much we can do on the security side except not make it too obvious. They must know we’ve got the Mitchell and if they believe I may be going to use it against them, we can’t stop ‘em believing, whatever we do. Still, once we’ve got the big changes made on her, I’ll take over rigging her for bombing myself. That’s as secure as we can get.’
They might have wanted to argue the point, but just then Miss Jiminez came back into the room. Maybe looking a little fresher, although I hadn’t noticed anything wrong in that department before.
Whitmore stayed sprawled where he was. I bent myself into that half-on-the-feet position the British use for showing they’re being polite. Luiz went across the room like a pouncing tiger and started easing her into a chair like a foot into a shoe.
‘A drink, Señorita?‘he suggested. ‘Or may I show you to your room? And I will arrange dinner.’
She hit him with a ten-kilowatt smile and said she’d settle for a gin and tonic.
The conversation lapsed. Beyond the open french windows the sky darkened and the sea breathed politely on the empty beach. A fat lizard came out to stand sentry duty in the light spilling on to the patio.
Finally I said: ‘Any idea of when this raid’s supposed to come off?’
Luiz spun round and snapped: ‘We are not discussing that any more.’
I smiled crookedly: I had a pretty good idea of what was going to happen now.
It did. Miss Jiminez looked up brightly. ‘You are talking about the bombing of the generals’ aeroplanes?’
Luiz said soothingly:‘Señorita, you need not concern yourself-‘
‘But this is what I am here for.’
He looked baffled. Whitmore said slowly: ‘I thought you came to take home your brother.’
‘I came to avenge him. I will have him sent home tomorrow. I will stay here.’
Luiz chewed his lip. Whitmore put on a puzzled frown. J.B. gave me a sharp glance, but didn’t say anything.
I said ‘Well – when?’
‘When the aeroplane is ready,’ Miss Jiminez said, ‘I will inform my father. After that, he will give one day’s warning.’
I nodded. ‘When are the bombs coming? And what bombs?’
‘Diego was fixing that,’ Whitmore said. ‘We ain’t heard anything since – I’m trying to get in touch again.’
Luiz stopped eating his lip and said: ‘Four 500-pounders.’
‘High-explosive?’
‘Yes.’
I nodded again. The Mitchell would carry 2,000 pounds, all right. In fact, given a long enough runway, I was pretty sure the Mitchell would carry everything you could cram into her and your Uncle Harry’s bathtub besides. She was a hell of a load-carrier – given a long enough runway. But
that was the problem: I couldn’t see the authorities at Palisadoes or Montego Bay, which had the long runways, giving flight clearance to this particular jaunt.
I looked at Miss Jiminez. ‘I want your father to understand that I can’t do this attack at just any time of day. It’s got to be-‘
She gave me a smile that raised flash burns. ‘But of course. As your Kitchener of Khartoum once said, “We have to make war as we must, and not as we would like to.” It must be dawn or dusk.’
Everybody was staring at her. I shook my head and muttered: ‘You ain’t heard nothing, yet.’ Then, louder: “That’s right. They seem to send at least a section up to forward base near the mountains during the day-‘
‘At Cordillera,’ she said.
“That’s the place, is it? But they don’t seem to leave aircrafton it overnight. I’d guess Ned’s scared of guerrilla raids and doesn’t trust the army to-‘
‘The generals do not trust each other,’ she said. ‘General Boscohas been recruiting ground troops for his Air Force -like your RAF Regiment – to become an airfield defence unit. He now has about three thousand men. Some are seconded from his other branches; many of the non-commissioned officers were once policemen.’
Now Luiz was really staring. Then he shook his head to see if he was still awake, and asked:‘Señorita, how do you know these things?’
She seemed surprised.‘Señor, you forget who is my father.’
Whitmore said: ‘Your father’s 500 miles from Caracas.’
‘Señor Whitmore, the Repúblicais not closed like a door. Letters come. Aeroplanes land there.’
Luiz persisted. ‘But your brother did not know all these things.’
‘My brother was my mother’s son,’ she said – quite sharply. ‘I am my father’s daughter. Diego knew what I told him.’
I’d begun to suspect something like that. I’d never seen Diego as the hard-working spider in the middle of an intelligence web. And the link between the Repúblicaand Caracas -because of the common language and something of a common history – would be much stronger than between the Repúblicaand Jamaica.
But mostly I was interested in the news of the trouble between the Air Force and the Army. I saw why-Ned had worked the cumbersome old system of controlling ground-attack fighters from right back at home base instead of letting the Army direct them on target from up on the front line – the way Ned himself had learnt it in Korea.