The Captain and the Enemy (18 page)

‘Mr Smith has left me a letter with a cheque. He wants me to go home immediately.’

‘And you are going?’

‘I want to tell him first what I plan.’

Colonel Martínez said, ‘I can only hope for all our sakes that will prove possible.’

I was completely at a loss. I told him, ‘I don’t know what you mean. Has he done something wrong? Is he in prison?’

‘Certainly not. He is our friend. We put a great value on all the work he has done for us. We have need of him.’ That damned word ‘need’ again.

‘And how does Mr Quigly come into all this?’

‘Well, I wouldn’t describe Mr Quigly as his friend.’

‘But’ – the name always made me hesitate – ‘Mr Smith sent Mr Quigly to meet me when I arrived.’

‘Oh, we were very content that Mr Smith should have a certain contact with Mr Quigly. We say nothing against Mr Quigly. If you decide to work for Mr Quigly it’s your decision, but perhaps if that happens we could give you a
little
advice. The advice I would give you now is just to wait. Don’t make up your mind until – as we hope will happen – you have spoken again to your father.’

He patted the papers on his desk and rose with a friendly smile to show that the interview – interrogation? – was at an end. He said, ‘Of course we shall let you know as soon as we have news of your father.’

(12)

But it was not Colonel Martínez who gave me the first news. It was Mr Quigly two hours later, or, as he would certainly have put it himself, two hours twelve minutes later. I had returned to the Captain’s room in the hotel, for I had nowhere else to go. I lay on the sofa, but I couldn’t sleep. All that was left for me to pass the time was thought – and
how
I thought, how I turned things over in my worried and twisted mind. It was as though I had been holding out my fist – as a child I had often done this for Liza – for a ball of knitting wool to be wound around it, and then I had carelessly moved and got the wool tangled.

Why were they anxious about the Captain’s absence – an absence of only a few hours? Hadn’t his life been full of absences since that first absence of his from the German prison camp was discovered by his guards if the story he told me was true? Did Mr Quigly and the Colonel fear a betrayal, but wasn’t his life full of betrayals? He had pretended to love Liza and yet he had left her continually for reasons which he never explained. Who was this Somoza of whom Colonel Martínez spoke and who were
the
Sandinistas? I was abysmally ignorant, I realized well enough, of all that might be happening in these unknown regions. My work as a journalist had been confined to a very small area of England. Once I had travelled on a story as far as Ipswich, on the track of an odd and rather comic tale about a thief. The Captain too was a thief. My mind shifted again back and forth and the wool became even more tangled. And Quigly? Who was Quigly? What was Quigly?

It was when I was asking myself these questions which were the most difficult of all to answer that the telephone rang. I knew at once what the voice at the other end would say (it would be the code word ‘Fred’) so I let it ring on and on. In a way the sound was a relief: the questions had stopped and the wool fell off my wrists.

At last the ringing ceased and after a short interval what I expected came: a knock on the door. I felt I had to open it and there, of course, was Mr Quigly.

‘I was ringing from below. They told me you were up here. Why didn’t you answer?’

‘I was busy thinking, Mr Quigly. Or should I call you Fred?’

‘This is no joke, Jim. I’ve had news, bad news. Your father, I’m sorry, I mean Mr Smith, he’s dead.’ It flashed through my mind that at least Mr Quigly hadn’t played for time as I had done when the Captain spoke to me of Liza. I was grateful to him for that. It seemed in a strange way to clear the air. I had no need to pretend a sorrow which I didn’t feel.

‘Are you sure? Colonel Martínez said he would let me know about him.’

‘Ah, but he probably hasn’t heard himself yet. You see
Mr
Smith took the wrong direction.’ Those were the same words which Colonel Martínez had used to me.

‘You mean if he had taken the right one …’

‘Colonel Martínez would have known where he was and he would be alive.’

‘What was the wrong direction?’

‘A nearly suicidal one. He must have known it was unlikely he would come back. I expect he never wanted to come back. He only wanted to help his friends and die.’

‘How would that help his friends?’

‘Because he would have killed Somoza too.’

‘Somoza?’

Would I ever cease to be a stranger in this region of the world where I was at a loss to remember all the names?

‘Oh, President Somoza survived all right – to please
my
friends.’

So, I thought, now it is all over, our quarrel and his life.

Mr Quigly went on, ‘He was in no danger from us. We wanted to keep him alive. If only to discover where exactly he was dumping his arms.’

‘What do you all mean – the wrong direction? How did he die?’

‘His plane crashed near the bunker in Managua where Somoza stays at night these days. The plane must have been as full as he could make it of explosives, but all he did was kill himself and break a few windows in the Intercontinental Hotel across the way. No one else was hurt – only himself.’

‘Oh,
he
wasn’t hurt,’ I said. ‘He’s free of me and Liza and all the others.’

‘The others?’

‘All who needed him.’

‘His death is a waste. He was even a little useful to us in his way. What will you do – Jim?’ He hesitated over the Christian name.

‘He’s left me enough money to go home.’

‘Will you go?’

‘I haven’t got a home.’ It was not in self-pity that I used the phrase, it was a cold statement of fact. I was like a man without a passport, only a card of residence.

Mr Quigly said, ‘I’m pretty sure that I can fix things for you if you will only stay. You know you have quite a bit of value, Jim.’ He didn’t hesitate this time over the name. ‘After all he
was
your father, and perhaps through you we might be able to contact and speak to some of his old friends.’

‘But he wasn’t my father.’

‘Oh, yes, I forgot, but we mustn’t be too literal, Jim.’

‘And Colonel Martínez?’

‘I’m sure he’ll be your friend too if you give him the chance. You don’t need to take sides between us. That’s something we shall have to talk about together. You can be of help to both of us. I’m sure that if you stay everything can be arranged satisfactorily.’

I felt lost in all his ambiguities. They were like a twisting country road with many signposts which had been long abandoned by heavy traffic. I found myself for a moment regretting the great auto routes and the thunder of heavy lorries. I said, ‘Go away, Mr Quigly. I want to be alone.’

Mr Quigly hesitated. ‘But we are friends, Jim. I came here as a friend.’

‘Yes, yes,’ I agreed without conviction in order to get
rid
of him and he went. But before he left he dropped an envelope on the bed. ‘Just in case you are running short,’ he said and was gone again into the city of a hundred and twenty-three banks. I thought, as I opened his envelope, ‘So here one obviously pays cash even for friendship.’ I put the money in my pocket – five two hundred dollar bills, and heard the telephone ring again. This time it was Pablo. He said, ‘Colonel Martínez wants to see you again. He has news for you.’

It amused me to tell him, ‘He needn’t trouble to see me. I have the news already. From Mr Quigly.’

There was a long silence on the line. I imagined Pablo in the Colonel’s office passing on this piece of news and waiting for his reply. It came at last. ‘Colonel Martínez says that it is important all the same that you should see him. At once. He is sending me with a car for you.’

(13)

While I wait for Pablo I am spending the time bringing this narrative to a close. With the Captain dead what is the point of continuing it? I realize more than ever that I am no writer. A real writer’s ambition doesn’t die with his main character.

What now? I have a return ticket to London (but I can turn that in) and the dollars left me by the Captain and Mr Quigly. Shall I take Mr Quigly’s advice and enter a world of secrecy and danger which will lead me I don’t know where. I don’t blame myself. It is the Captain who is responsible. He knew where he was going when he stole the jewels, when he crashed his plane. Sometimes if I
think
of the Captain I imagine that in some strange way he will prove one day to have been my real father if only for this legacy of illegality which he has injected into my bloodstream. I remember again the dream I had last night before Mr Quigly woke me, with an added detail, which I had forgotten. All that remained in my mind when I woke was the dark path which I was following into some deep wood, but now the reason for my walk came back to me. I had been following two mules which stopped again and again to crop the grass. There was nothing on their backs and I had no idea why I was pursuing them. The Captain of course would have known. How often he had spoken to me of those mules, but in his version they always carried sacks of gold.

One can hate one’s father and even though I may choose to follow in his footsteps, it will still be hate that I shall feel. Compared with Liza I was nothing to him. He looked after her till her death, but me – he has left me this unfeeling legacy of a ticket of return to a place I have left for ever and if I stay here one thing I know for sure. I shall write no more. The bell of my room is ringing. It’s almost certainly Pablo, coming to take me to see Colonel Martínez, and afterwards what do I do? Shall I tell Mr Quigly what passed between me and the Colonel? Do I take Mr Quigly’s money? Will the Colonel offer me money – or only advice? The Captain would have advised me from his own experience, but he’s safe and dead, and anyway would I have trusted him? It was only for Liza that he cared if he ever cared for her. We have both been a burden to him. And then
King Kong
came back into my mind and the words he had used to me then when I watched the King with his burden – a burden which
kicked
him so hard that I wondered why he didn’t drop her into the street below: ‘He loves her, boy, can’t you understand that?’ Perhaps I have never understood the nature of love. Perhaps … I wish I had seen him once more or that I hadn’t lied to him at the beginning.

(14)

When I returned to this room from seeing Colonel Martínez I found in the kitchen some torn scraps of paper in the waste-paper basket which both I and Mr Quigly had missed. He had probably assumed that anything of real importance would have been burnt or shredded. He was a professional.

I think these scraps may have formed part of the letter the Captain had left for me and perhaps he thought they told too much about his weakness. I stuck them together and put them down now as a conclusion to this failed book of mine which no one will ever publish or read.

What do
I
need? Why the hell is it that I am always the one who seems to be needed. There was an old woman in the street once in Manchester and I needed what little I had far more than she needed it, but I suppose it wasn’t her fault that she couldn’t feel my need, and I could feel hers. It’s not natural though. If I had the strength of King Kong …

The last sentence became quite unreadable. Strange that he too had remembered King Kong.

Enough of all this nonsense. I have more than a thousand and ten dollars (I counted them like Mr Quigly)
as
well as the money the Captain left me and the ticket which I can trade in. I write a line under all this scroll before I throw the whole thing into the same waste-paper basket, where anyone who chooses can find it. The line means Finis. I’m on my own now and I am following my own mules to find my own future.

(1)

COLONEL MARTÍNEZ LOOKED WITH
a hint of amusement in his eyes at Mr Quigly. He said, ‘This time we got to Mr Smith’s room before you. The parcel was found in the waste-paper basket. Did the young man really throw it away because he had no intention of writing any more? But then why didn’t he destroy it? I doubt if we shall ever learn the real reason. He’s on his way – somewhere. My translator has had no time to do more than deal with the last pages beginning with his arrival in Panama. When he meets you, it is then that his account becomes interesting. The boy seems to have had a certain talent and it’s a pity he didn’t stick to writing, for writing is a safe occupation. I wanted to see you because there are so many references to you in – shall I call it his novel, Señor Quigly?’

‘Well, I was a friend of his father.’

‘Not a very close friend we have reason to believe.’

‘Well, quite often I was able to help him in small ways. Like when I met Jim at the airport.’

‘And you got news of Señor Smith’s death quicker than we did, so perhaps we haven’t taken you seriously enough, Señor Quigly. Did you warn Somoza’s people in Managua of the route he was taking?’

‘How could I have known?’