The Captain and the Enemy (16 page)

I implored, ‘If he’s there, can’t I speak to him, please? Tell him it’s urgent.’

There was another long pause and then it was Mr Quigly who replied. ‘What is it, Mr Smith?’

‘It’s not Mr Smith. It’s Jim.’

‘Jim?’

‘His son.’ The complexity of our relations increased at every moment.

‘Oh, it’s you.’

‘Yes, it’s me.’

‘What’s so urgent?’

‘I can’t tell you over the telephone. Can I come and see you? But I haven’t your address.’

‘It’s difficult for me to see you here. Look. Wait a moment while I think. Come to that restaurant in a quarter of an hour. The one with the Pisco Sours. We can talk alone there.’

I put down the telephone and went out into the night, uncertain of my route and of my future. The banks stood around me like immense tombstones, lit only on the lowest floors by the light from the little houses of the rich which lay among them. I took several wrong turnings, afraid always of finding myself suddenly in that other Panama, of dirt and penury and drugs, or that by crossing a street I might enter a different country altogether, the United States of America. Nor did I remember the name of the restaurant. There were few taxis about and no ranks, and it was only by repeating the words ‘restaurant’ and ‘Peru’ to several passers-by that I came on the rendezvous at last.

Mr Quigly had not yet arrived. I bought myself a Pisco Sour out of what remained of the money Liza had given me and waited with impatience and apprehension. The restaurant was nearly empty and there were very few people in the streets where Pablo had warned me that muggings were frequent at night. Although I sipped it slowly my Sour was finished long before a taxi drew up
and
Mr Quigly appeared in the doorway. The Sour had not mixed well with the whisky in my stomach, and Mr Quigly in my eyes looked more narrow than he had ever done before.

‘I’m sorry I was a little delayed,’ he apologized. ‘In my line of business the unexpected is always liable to happen.’ He seemed to choose his words with the slow care of a leader writer for a paper of quality. ‘I see you have had a Pisco Sour. Can I offer you another?’

‘It was a mistake,’ I said. ‘It doesn’t go with whisky.’

‘Another whisky then. And perhaps I’ll take one myself. For me it has been a long dry evening.’

I told him, ‘No I won’t take anything. I want to tell you that I’ve quarrelled finally with the Captain.’

‘The Captain?’

‘The man you call Smith.’

Mr Quigly didn’t answer for a while. He seemed to be plunged in reflection, and when he answered it was in a tone of reproach. ‘Was that really necessary?’

‘He’s giving me my ticket home. He wants me to go on the first possible plane.’

‘And you?’

‘I don’t want to go. I told him you had offered me a job.’

‘And what did he say to that?’

‘He was furious. I was afraid of him. I went away.’

Mr Quigly again seemed sunk in thought. He was not an impulsive man I knew by this time. Perhaps he was calculating in figures as he had at the airport, not ten but twelve. At last he spoke again. ‘I must say I find myself a little at sea. Why was he so angry? You seemed to have talked a little rashly about that job. Nothing is
quite
settled yet. After all he’s your father. He has a right …’

‘But he isn’t my father. He won me at backgammon – or at chess. The Devil says it was chess.’

‘Who on earth is the Devil?’

‘My real father.’

‘Oh dear, oh dear,’ Mr Quigly said. ‘I think before we settle about a job you’ll have to make things a little clearer to me. I haven’t the final word you know. There are others I have to persuade.’

So I told him as briefly as I could the story of myself and Liza and our life with the Captain and his frequent disappearances and changes of name. I told him too of Liza’s death and how I had lied to the Captain.

He surprised me by his comment when I had finished. ‘Why, it’s quite a love story.’

‘I don’t know about the love,’ I said.

‘Well, at least they seemed to have – how shall I put it – needed each other. I suppose that could be called love.’ Mr Quigly spoke like one who had as little experience in that domain as I had and depended on hearsay. ‘What do you suppose he did to keep you both? A single man who takes on a family. It’s no light thing.’

‘We never knew exactly what he did, but the police seemed always interested in him.’

‘I too have often wondered,’ Mr Quigly said. ‘He seems to earn a lot of money here with that plane of his. Charter flights I suppose. But carrying what? Well, I think I know the answer to that. And how did he get a plane in the first place?’

‘He told me it all began in Colombia.’

‘Yes, I did get to know something of that from a
colleague
of mine in Caracas. Probably drugs. Nothing very serious I should imagine. Not hard drugs. Just marijuana. Baby stuff. He dropped the traffic pretty soon I imagine and flew here. Perhaps it was too dangerous or perhaps his conscience … Has he a conscience? Anyway I doubt if he ever paid for his plane because I happen to know – from my colleague – that one country he’ll never go back to around here is Colombia. I think he may be wanted there by his old comrades.’

‘You seem to know a lot. I thought you were only a financial correspondent.’

Mr Quigly gave his abrupt little giggle, a giggle which was as narrow as himself. There was no humour in it, or, if there was, it was a humour as tightly confining as his trousers.

‘Finance,’ he said, ‘comes into everything. Politics, war, marriage, crime, adultery. Everything that exists in the world has something to do with money. Even religion. The priest has to buy his bread and wine and the criminal has to buy his gun – or his plane.’

‘But you think the drug business is over?’

‘I am sure of it. He wouldn’t be protected by Colonel Martínez in the drug business, and he
is
protected.’

‘Who is this Colonel Martínez?’

‘Well, it’s difficult to say exactly. An important officer in the National Guard.’

‘Are you protected?’

‘They don’t exactly protect me so far as I can tell, but of course they are interested in me. You see, I work for an American paper … they’re apt to be suspicious of anything American.’

‘What use is an old plane like the Captain’s?’

‘Oh, he can’t carry very heavy stuff of course, but it’s not the heavy stuff which the guerrillas need.’

‘Guerrillas? In Panama?’

‘No, no, not in Panama, but you know the phrase “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.” The people here hate the Zone. In Nicaragua they are fighting Somoza and in Salvador they are fighting the death squads – and both Somoza and the death squads are helped by the United States.’

‘And where are you in all this?’

‘I’ve told you. I’m only a financial correspondent. My paper is not very important, but I’m pretty sure my information is read even in the
Wall Street Journal
. Of course I am English. I’m neutral, but news is news. Even news about the small stuff. You see, the small stuff has to be bought somewhere. Of course the Yankees say it comes from Russia or Cuba. Anyone who fights a dictator controlled by them is a Communist. It’s a useful way of explaining things to the great public and perhaps they are right. It wouldn’t do to say that their friend Israel might be ready to sell a few tanks to
their
friends the dictators. Finance you see, finance in everything. I am a financial correspondent and I need information.’

I was surprised by Mr Quigly. Behind all his evasions and abstractions he was for once remarkably frank.

‘And you are ready to give me a job?’ I challenged him.

‘A small retainer I should say while I consult my editor. What about another whisky?’

I agreed, for whisky had certainly loosened Mr Quigly’s tongue. He held this one in his hand without even sipping it. He gazed deep into the glass like a medium who is looking for an image in a crystal ball. At
last
– perhaps he had seen the image which he was seeking – he said, ‘I regard your father, I mean Mr Smith, or what is it you call him, the Captain, as a friend whom I had hoped to know much better. In helping you I thought that I might be indirectly helping him. We can help each other in little ways. I am really rather distressed to hear that you have quarrelled with him.’ He added with unexpected crudity, ‘After all he’s in it for the money as much as I am, and we might easily have come to work together. It’s all a financial affair when you come down to it. My friends could pay him a lot better than the guerrillas. Have you seen his plane?’

‘He’s taken me for a ride.’

‘I’ve always wondered where he kept it. Perhaps you could give me a clue.’

I was still lost – I don’t think it was only the whisky which bemused me. I said, ‘The clue I want is where to spend the night. I suppose there are cheap hotels even in Panama.’

‘I would not advise a cheap hotel in Panama. But you don’t need to worry. To tell you the truth it’s Mr Smith I have to worry about. He can be rash. I’d like to see your father – sorry, Mr Smith – and try to make up for this unnecessary quarrel. Perhaps he’s flown off in a rage. If he’s not at the hotel. Where do you say he kept his plane?’

I had said nothing, but now I told him as best I could. It was the map of the unmade town which caught his attention. ‘Oh there, how very odd. What possible shelter?’

‘Oh, there’s a sort of hut.’

The drinks had loosened my tongue too and freed my curiosity. ‘What I don’t understand is how you two could
possibly
work together. You haven’t told me anything clearly, but I can tell you are on opposite sides.’

‘There are no opposite sides where money is concerned. He’s not working for a cause. He’s working for that adopted mother of yours and now she’s dead. He doesn’t need money for her any longer. He doesn’t need money for you. I can find you all you need. He needs a little for himself of course, and I can help him there, if only he would listen to me.’

‘How?’

‘I’ll pay him well for any information he can give me.’

I noticed Mr Quigly always used the word information, never intelligence. Perhaps he thought it a more innocuous word.

‘Do you agree,’ Mr Quigly asked, ‘that I go and see him first thing in the morning? He will have had time to think things over. The changed situation. Your mother’s – what’s her name? – Liza’s death.’

‘You can do what you like. It won’t do you any good. He’ll never forgive me for my lies.’

‘Perhaps I can show them to him from a new angle.’

‘He doesn’t trust you.’

‘Perhaps not me. But in finance one trusts one’s bank. I could be his bank.’

I was tired of the two words, bank and finance. I wanted to sleep.

Mr Quigly in the end was very obliging. He found me a room of a sort not very far off and paid for the night’s rent in advance. Before he left he asked me to call him Fred. ‘My name is Cyril,’ he said, ‘but all my real friends call me Fred.’ It was as if he was putting his signature – true or
false
– to an agreement, and I couldn’t help feeling that Cyril suited him far better than the colloquial Fred.

(10)

I was woken around ten and fetched to the telephone. A voice said, ‘Fred speaking,’ and for a long moment I couldn’t remember who Fred was. ‘Quigly,’ the voice explained with impatience. ‘I’m at the Continental Hotel. Please come at once.’

‘I can’t come at once. I’m not dressed.’

‘Then dress quickly, please.’ He spoke almost as though he were already my employer.

I found him waiting in the lobby and he drew me away out of earshot of the porter.

‘He’s gone,’ he said.

‘Gone where?’

‘It’s what I’d like to know. The porter’s got a letter for him. With an English stamp. That’s interesting. Ask him to give it to you. Say you are off to see him. And ask him to give you back the key of his room. They won’t let
me
have it, but they know you shared it and it’s still reserved.’

‘Why should I want the key back – or you?’

‘There may be indications.’

‘Of what?’

‘Of what he’s up to.’

‘I thought you knew – something to do with arms.’

‘As a newspaper man,’ he was still clinging to that unlikely cover, ‘I want details.’

‘If they are financial, I suppose,’ I said to mock him, ‘they will interest the
Wall Street Journal
.’

But he was quite unconscious of my teasing. ‘Yes, his finances are of great interest, and who finances him. I think this letter may give us a clue.’

I gave way to him and went to fetch the letter and the key. There was no difficulty. The porter probably thought I had spent the night there. Up in the room we had shared Mr Quigly moved quickly around. ‘He can’t be gone far,’ he said. ‘He’s coming back tonight.’ And he held up a pair of pyjamas lying on the sofa unfolded.

I said, ‘I used the sofa. Those are my pyjamas.’

‘Ah,’ he wasn’t disappointed, for he had turned over a pillow on the bed, ‘then these are his. So it comes to the same thing. He expects to return.’

‘Are you glad of that?’

‘Yes, for it’s much easier to keep an eye on him here. I expect that he’ll be going by his usual route. Over Costa Rica. Then across the border to drop the arms somewhere in the Estelí region where the Sandinistas are strongest.’

‘I don’t even know what country you are talking about.’

‘Look in the wardrobe, while I go through the waste-paper basket.’

I obeyed him. I was beginning to be interested myself. I had never followed as closely as we were doing now the Captain’s activities, which had kept Liza and myself in a kind of demi-comfort through so many years. The nearest I had ever come to what Mr Quigly liked to call ‘information’ was that line I had read in the
Telegraph
about a man ‘with a military bearing’ who had asked the
way
at the jeweller’s shop to ‘Baxter Street’. Baxter Street and Estelí – two unknown places cropping up with so many years between them.

‘Where’s Estelí?’ I asked.

‘I told you. Where Somoza’s National Guard is weakest and the Sandinistas strongest.’