The Shadow of the Shadow (26 page)

A baseball team was celebrating its latest victory at the bar.
There was some small action at the pool tables in the back, and a
group of Galician swindlers and cardsharps sat scheming at the
strategic table by the door.

Manterola took his seat at the normal place, joined shortly
by Eustaquio with a bottle of Havana brandy and a dirty rag he
passed a couple of times over the marble tabletop.

"My friends haven't been by yet?"

"Haven't seen hide nor hair of them, no messages, no telephone calls. But that gentleman over there says he wants to talk to you."
Manterola followed the bartender's pointing finger and found

himself contemplating an elegantly dressed officer, his military
jacket and pants impeccably pressed, his stripes shining in the dim
light. It was the same man he'd known only a week earlier in the
form of a comatose hod carrier. The journalist smiled. If Jesus of
Nazareth had come back from the dead, why not a Mexico City
construction worker? He waved the man over to his table and
asked Eustaquio for another glass.

"Major Martinez, secret service," the man introduced himself.
"I'm sorry if I gave you a bit of a start."

"Not at all, Major. My only regret is that you were unconscious
the last time we met. A little bit of conversation would have done
me good."

"My apologies, Manterola. You know, when duty calls..."

"Who do you work for, Major, if I may be so blunt?"

"I report directly to the President of the Republic, General
Obregon, through his secretary Mr. Alessio Robles."

The barman set another glass on the table and Manterola
poured it full of brandy, but the officer declined with a wave of
his finger.

"You'll have to excuse me. I don't drink when I'm on duty."

"I'm all ears, Major."

"I think it's the other way around, Mr. Manterola."

"What do you want me to tell you?"

"Everything you know about Colonels Martinez Fierro,
Zevada, and Gomez. Everything you know about the Mata
Redonda Plan."

"The what?"

"Let's start with the colonels."

"Well, this is the first I've ever heard anything about Martinez
Fierro. Zevada is dead, he either fell or got thrown out of a window
in the building across from the newspaper. Gomez is chief of the
gendarmerie. That about sums it up. If you want any personal opinion, I'd say that Gomez is corrupt, a thief and a murderer."

"What would you think if I told you that on separate occasions,
both Gomez and Martinez Fierro tried to have you killed?"

"Listen, Major, let's quit beating around the bush. You tell me
what you know and I'll see if I can't fit the pieces of my puzzle into
the frame you give me."

"I'm sorry, Mr. Manterola, I can't do that. However, I do have
an important message for you: the President of the Republic
personally urges you to continue with your investigation. I myself
second the president's wishes, and furthermore, I suggest you
proceed with great caution.' hat's all I'm at liberty to tell you for the
time being. Take this telephone number. If something important
happens or if you need my help, don't hesitate to call."

The officer handed Manterola a card with the number 42-38
written on one side.

"Is this an Ericsson number or a Mexican number?"

"Mexican. When they answer, ask for the `red line,"' said the
major, getting to his feet.

Manterola raised the card to his temple as a sort of goodbye,
then watched as the man walked out the door. Left alone, he let
out a sigh.

"General Obregon personally urges you... Damn. What kind of a
chump does he think I am that he figures he can come along and
give me orders just like that?"

IN THE MIDDLE OF J U N E 19 14 , General Villa ordered
the entire Northern Division to advance on Zacatecas, despite
General Carranza's objections. The horses rode inside the train
cars, and the cavalry rode on top making up songs about how they
were going to break the backbone of Huerta's army in Zacatecas.

Twenty-two thousand men eventually congregated on the
outskirts of the city. The Nateras and Zaragoza Brigades, the
troops of Aguirre Benavides, the Villa, Urbina, and Morelos
brigades, the forces under Maclovio Herrera and Manuel Chao,
the artillery under Felipe Angeles. Fermin Valencia wandered
around the camps, smelling the food, watching the faces, searching everywhere for signs of the imminent battle, but everything he
saw looked like the preparations for a celebration.

On June 23, at ten in the morning, the Northern Division's
fifty cannons opened fire on the fortified hills surrounding the city.
The poet's blood, already infected by the festive atmosphere, started
to boil. Holding his cavalry in reserve, changing the location of his
artillery, and using strategic infantry assaults, Villa wore down the
Federal forces. Loreto fell in only an hour. The bombardment grew
in strength. Lead rained from the overcast sky above Zacatecas.

At five o'clock in the afternoon, the order came for the Villa
and Cuauhtemoc brigades to move out. The poet spurred his
horse into a trot along with a thousand other Horsemen of the
Revolution.

Little by little they brought their horses to a gallop, the federal
artillery tearing holes into their ranks. Invisible machine guns
sprayed them with lead. At the poet's side, a horse was hit and its rider tumbled to the ground. The cavalry cut its way through the
gunpowder smoke and the dust, leaving the explosions behind.
All of a sudden, a shout ran down the line, the first trench opened
up dizzily in front of them. They leaped over it howling. The poet
gripped the reins between his teeth, dug in his spurs, grabbed his
pistols and fired on the fleeing federales. Next to him, one of the
horsemen was singing. The first line of federales broke before them,
sweeping along the second in their panicked retreat.

The poet reached the first houses on the edge of Zacatecas and
reigned in his horse.

"Viva Villa, cabrones!" he screamed. At that moment, Fermin
Valencia was a happy man.

"IF YOU DIDN'T SMOKE, it wouldn't be a ploblem, San
Vicente," said the Chinaman in the blackness.

"Hell, I've got plenty of cigs, man. It's just that this is my next
to the last match, and I hate to waste it."

Tomas had removed the crystal from his watch. He could tell
by feel they'd been ten hours in that cold damp moldy cellar into
which they'd fallen through the trapdoor in the floor above. Once
they'd recovered from the fall, they'd used San Vicente's matches
to explore their surroundings, but after half an hour they'd given
up. All they found was a pair of empty coffins shoved into a corner,
and a few old sacks of rotten potatoes. The floor and the walls were
dirt and the only way out was through the trapdoor three and a
half yards above their heads, which had automatically swung shut
behind them. The only way to get up or down was for someone to
lower a ladder from the room above.

Their vigil had been interrupted just once in the last ten hours,
when they heard footsteps crossing the floor over their heads. But
the hot-tempered Spanish anarchist had cut the matter short,
sending a pair of bullets flying up through the floorboards. From
the shouts that followed, they could guess that one of San Vicente's
bullets had found its target. After that, there was nothing.

San Vicente had climbed up on top of the two coffins and
Tomas in turn had gotten onto his friend's shoulders, from where
he could just reach the trapdoor with outstretched hands, but the
spring seemed to be locked or jammed somehow from above. All
they could do was give up and settle down to wait.

"What if they want to starve us to death?" asked San Vicente.
"How long can you go without eating?"

"Hell, when you're in good shape and have enough to drink,
three weeks maybe. Here, who knows?"

Neither one of them was much for small talk. Once they'd
arrived at the conclusion that there was nothing to do but wait,
they hadn't exchanged more than a couple dozen words every hour
or so.

"Listen, Tomas, I've lived pretty hard, I've lived a lot, and I've
always known I could die from one day to the next. I never liked
it too much... I've dreamed my death plenty of times, you know.
There's a lot of different ways to go but, hell, I never thought it
could be as stupid as this."

"It's my fault, San Vicente. I make a pletty lotten Chinaman.
This is what happens to me fol not knowing my own people. This
is maybe only the fifth time I've been hele in Chinatown in my
whole life. I don't like the food, I don't know a damn thing about
tongs of tliads. It wasn't so bad back in Tampico, I had a bettel feel
fol what was going on. Shit, when it comes light down to it, I can't
baldly tell a Chinaman flom a Filipino of a Japanese."

"Yeah, but you can tell the difference between a comrade and
a son of a bitch. A few months back in San Luis Potosi, another
Spaniard showed me a postcard of the town where I was born in
Asturias. He might as well have shown me a picture of Borneo.
The whole idea of countries and borders isn't worth two shits in
hell. A man's from wherever he is right now. A man's country is
the two square feet he stands on. A little more when they stick you
in the ground."

"How do you think it wolks?"

"How's what work?"

"The tlap dool. The hinges'le on this side, on splings. And then
thele's a pin that locks in place when the splings swing the dool
closed. The leason we couldn't get it open befole is because they've
got it locked flom above. But what if we get up on the coffins again
and shoot out the hinges? What do you think?"

"We'll never know unless we try. The only problem is we've only got two matches left. You should have thought of it sooner."

"Didn't you win a malksmanship contest once in Tampico?"

"Sure, dammit, but I wasn't any where near so cold back then."