Thing to Love (33 page)

“Our chief trouble will be our own newspaper correspondents. I can handle them for two or three weeks. They will all be in and around Hermosillo, and they will never see a plane at all. When they have to be told something at last, I shall appeal to patriotism. That will be good for three or four days more. But during all this time — it might with luck be enough for the general to track down Avellana's Commandos and wipe them out — the country is bound to be flooded by rumors. Avellana cannot know who is flying the aircraft unless he has the luck to bring one down, but he is going to fill the air with protests and accusations. Now, what are we to say in reply?”

“Enough of our own pilots have come over to Vidal.”

“Well, it would be difficult to disprove. But in that case you would give their names with all possible publicity. You wouldn't shut them up on Lérida Airfield.”

“Right-wing exiles from all over Latin America who can fly and have been involved in revolutions.”

“That would be helpful — and we might throw in some Poles, Czechs and Hungarians for good measure. But I have had experience of this sort of thing, Doña Felicia. However closely we guard
the air crews and the ground staff, Lérida is going to know the truth.”

“It will be only a rumor, and you should hear some of the absurdities which are being whispered already! Just as many start in the Ateneo as in the Barracas. We shall start counter-rumors. Anything will be believed for a couple of days. The direct intervention of archangels, if you like. No, don't laugh! It would go down quite well in some of the remoter nunneries.”

“And may I use you for communication with Doña Concha? I shall have to keep away from the Palace once the move is arranged.”

“Of course. Guayanas only asks speed from you, Don Andrés. Help my husband to finish with this horrible business once and for all.”

CHAPTER XVIII

[
February 17–27
]

I
N THE ABSENCE OF HER HUSBAND
Felicia was generally up and about long before her cook, Elena, returned from market; but the previous evening had been long and exhausting. She had been acting as interpreter between Concha, who spoke little English, and two mysterious North Americans. After that she had telephoned to Miro, who was at Lérida with Don Andrés, and passed on an urgent message about “our friends” — deliberately obscure, since they were talking over the open land lines, and sandwiched between such cold endearments as she could manage when two complete strangers were leaning on the desk.

The whole move had gone efficiently and secretly. In another week the sorties from Lérida, commanding and invulnerable as horsemen rounding up the herds, would begin to sweep the llanos reporting every concentration of the Avellanistas and marking them down for envelopment and destruction.

Concha had described to her the arrival of the air crews. The big airliner had screamed in at dusk and stopped at the far end of the airport, where the whispering grass closed upon the tarmac. Within five minutes the passengers and their baggage had entered three motor coaches driven by picked men of the security police and were on their way to Lérida. There was nothing about the
coaches themselves to attract attention except that the window slats which shaded the seats from sun were down at night.

Even San Vicente flight control was not in the secret. The airliner reported itself as empty, on the way to Brazil for sale, and coming in to refuel. And empty it was by the time it had taxied back to the airport. An hour later it continued its flight on course until it had passed far beyond the control zone of Guayanas and could turn for home.

As yet there had been no very definite reactions from the town of Lérida. Agents mixing with the people reported that they were busily making their own rumors. Since ground crews from the Air Force had been seen to enter the airfield for duty, it was assumed that pilots too had passed over to Vidal. If the government did not announce the fact in triumph but chose to keep it secret, it was in order to surprise the Avellanistas. Don Andrés considered that this story, with variations, might be kept going for a while even after operations had begun.

Best news of all was that Gregorio Vidal had quietly accepted the accomplished fact. There was nothing else he could do. When informed that the air crews were safely and discreetly at Lérida — for Don Andrés and his organization had insisted that then at least he must be told — he had not appeared at all resentful. So far as could be judged from his long-distance personality at the end of a wire, he assumed that Concha and Miro had forced his hand.

Concha herself had begun to wonder whether he had not expected it, whether in fact his sudden departure for New York had not been a calculated avoidance of responsibility rather than panic. It could be, she told Felicia, that she had underrated the cunning of the Managerial Society. Direct evidence was untraceable, but she strongly suspected that Gregorio had left instructions that if Miro gave the order to admit the North American air crews, it was to be obeyed. There seemed to be a trail laid pointing directly at Miro.

As Felicia had foreseen, Miro never questioned the authority for this secret intervention, assuming that one reason, probably the main reason, for Don Gregorio's absence was to arrange the details
on the spot. She had not the slightest feeling of guilt in leaving it at that. He knew, as always, the one military essential which he needed, and she had got it for him — a small tactical Air Force which at last could ease for the Division its intractable task of both scattering widely enough to preserve some sort of contact with the enemy and of being present in sufficient force to hold him until he could be pinned down and destroyed. According to Don Andrés, Miro had at once and typically concentrated not on the problems of the campaign, but on providing for the North American air crews every possible comfort in their internment and on charming their commander, with whom he appeared to have established an enthusiastic mutual admiration society.

Still in bed, she heard Elena enter the flat and lay down her heavy basket inside the door instead of going straight to the kitchen and unpacking her purchases with a wail of song. The cook knocked and came in, bursting straight into her story upon a note of indignation.

“There was a fellow in the market who asked me to give this at once into the hands of your ladyship. When I turned my back upon him he said that it was something political, and that if he wished your ladyship to know what he had the honor to think of her appearance he would shout it in the street instead of stopping a pretty maid and passing a letter like some bastard in a comic opera. Your ladyship will excuse the language which was his not mine, although for the rest his approach appeared most courteous. Also he said that he would be there when the market closes to receive your ladyship's reply.”

Felicia took the cheap envelope, unaddressed but, considering its origin, surprisingly clean.

“All right, Elena. Thank you. You said nothing to the police at the door?”

“And what would I say to them, my mistress? They have nothing to do but get in the way of honest folk. There is not a soul who would harm your ladyship.”

When Elena had gone Felicia opened the envelope with a faint
sense of unease, expecting abuse or obscenity although the solid approach of the stranger in the market seemed to preclude both.

If you drive down the coast on the Cumana road you will find by the wayside a person to whom you and your distinguished husband last said good-by late at night outside a village of peons. You will agree that to avoid misunderstandings it should not be known that we have met.

The young fellow who will deliver this note can neither read nor write but is a person of confidence. You have only to tell him no, or yes and the time. I give you my word that I shall be alone. Yours I do not need, since all Guayanas knows that the most respected lady is as discreet as she is fearless.

Morote's spelling was still eccentric with an old-fashioned tendency to muddle
b's
and
v's
, but the writing, sure to be his own in a matter of such delicacy, flowed from coarse fingers as firmly as his music, though plainly a slow and obstinate reproduction of the copperplate he had learned as a child.

It seemed early to receive a feeler for peace, but if this was one, it was traveling in the right direction. Morote to Juan would have been more natural. They did not, however, understand each other at all. So Morote to Miro, via herself, was a fair substitute.

She sent a message back by Elena that she would leave San Vicente at four o'clock and not in the white car. It was the hottest part of the day but also the quietest.

Quiet indeed it was as she jolted over the lines and cobbles of the tram terminus where Miro had received the accolade of the fly-blown stalls. The only visible inhabitants were half asleep in the shade, observing her even less than a fat iguana which clung to the top of a red-hot rail warming its cold belly into activity. She drove slowly along the sea in a borrowed car and at last saw Morote in her mirror suddenly appearing from behind a cactus gray with dust. She waited. He got quickly into the back of the car without a word.

“Where to, Don Pablo?” she asked.

“On a little way, then we can sit in the shade among the rocks.”

She drove south until he directed her into a track to the right
rutted by carts collecting weed from the sea. It ended at a low cliff where the coast was too savage to attract swimmers and picnic parties. Morote led the way down to the shore and onto a patch of dark sand, glistening with copper and mica where the sun struck it through the clefts. She followed him a little doubtfully, influenced more by what Miro would think than by any apprehension of her own. He never quite understood how safe she was among her compatriots of Indian blood.

“Doña Felicia, what I have to say to you is urgent. There is no time for politenesses more than to assure you I am honored by your presence. Doña Felicia, they know.”

“Who knows what?”

“Look! I have nothing against you and still less against the general. And so I tell you that I must march with Gil Avellana now, unless . . . Well, I make neither threats nor conditions. It is just that I want to exchange views.”

“Unless you are arrested first?”

“Doña Felicia, we are not children. What good is that going to do you? Or do you wish the port and the Barracas to break into the jail?”

“They will have to deal with the troops if they do.”

“Troops? There is not much in the Citadel beyond clerks and storekeepers who will do their best but prefer to stay behind walls. Or do you trust the Presidential Guard? Listen! We have the knives and the university has the brains. What more we have is our own business. You will admit it would be surprising if, after Cruzada, some arms and explosives had not escaped from the battlefield into safe hands. No, you dare not arrest me, and I shall march with Avellana unless your husband agrees to march with me.”

“He promised you that he would use his influence when the war was over.”

“He knows very well that he is on the wrong side, Doña Felicia.”

“He does not!” she exclaimed with a fury which startled her. “How dare you say that, Morote!”

“Good! Then we will do without ceremonies,” he replied, squatting
down on a round-topped rock. “What I offer you is Kucera and Morote at the head of the people's revolution. And we will do with Avellana and Valdés what we please.”

“He would never accept! Never!”

“I feared it. And it is true he told me that it would all end by one of us putting the other against a wall. But, Doña Felicia, I believe he has respect for me as I have for him. And with you and your father to keep the peace between us, who can say?”

“Does my father know what you are telling me?”

“Who the devil in this country can be sure what Don Juan knows and what he doesn't? He sits there at the Fonsagrada house with old monkeyface Pancho, and the doctors and the pretty nurses, yet it could well be he guesses what I am telling you, though I have not spoken to him since we all met at La Joya.”

“Ask him, Don Pablo! Go there and ask him! He will tell you the same — that my husband will never lead his own men or any others against the legal government.”

“Then what happens, must happen. When the Russians declare for Avellana, I shall accept their decision.”

“They have been backing Avellana for months,” she answered contemptuously.

“Yes? Well, they haven't said a word about it publicly and the least possible to the Party. They know very well, as I do, that Gil Avellana is not even a Socialist. Pedro Valdés — that is another matter. Don Pedro, I think, is now a member of the Party. And what a man! Horses against armor!”

“Nobody can catch all his fleas at once.”

“But the longer they hold out, the more they breed. And now there will be too many to catch. I tell you, the Russians know.”

“Know what?” she repeated.

“Doña Felicia, you are all intelligent and experienced. But you forget that around you are the humble. They are very ignorant, but also very curious. When you start to move ammunition from the Air Force sheds in the Citadel to Lérida, there are backs which carry it. When aircraft come in to refuel, there are men who remove and empty the bins of rubbish; and since they cannot live on the few pesos they are paid, they sort it carefully. What did they
find on an empty plane? Enough bones and unscraped paper plates for a banquet in the Barracas. And everything North American — cigarette cartons, chewing gum, candy wrappers. That there were passengers in that plane is certain. And another little point. When the steps were wheeled out to the plane, it was noticed that those which were wanted could not be found. Yet in the morning they were back in place.”

“I do not even know what plane you are talking about, Don Pablo,” she said.

Apparently she convinced him. It was very possible, after all, that she was not in the secret.

“Then I will tell you. Between eighty and a hundred North American airmen arrived at San Vicente airport. With all that evidence and then a little professional attention to Lérida by the Communists, we know the whole story.”

“What has it to do with the Communists if, as you say, they are not sure of Avellana?”

“Doña Felicia, I have no interest in high politics. What interests me is that my people should have enough to eat for themselves and their families. But I have noticed that where one giant enters the other follows, and without so much as a knock at the door. And on this occasion, since we have nothing to hope for from Vidal, very welcome!”

“The Russians can do nothing. There is no way of getting help to Avellana.”

The shade of the rocks became dank and chilly. She remembered too well how Miro had said before the revolution that only Morote had the power to defeat him.

“No way, Doña Felicia — except to encourage us to help ourselves.” He stood up, instantly transformed from a yellow, fairy-story frog into a square man of pathetic dignity. “Good! There is nothing more that I can say except to beg of you to stay at home or with your father. I shall stay here till you have gone, and find my own way back to town. Go with God, Doña Felicia.”

On her return to San Vicente Felicia at once reported what Morote had said to her, but even to Concha did not repeat that the true reason for the interview was Morote's impossible dream of a
joint dictatorship with Miro; there was no object in sowing a seed of mistrust. She allowed it to be thought that Morote had approached her only as a substitute for Juan.

Her news was consistent with a guarded warning from the President. He had been tipped off by a friend on the Secretariat of the Organization of American States that the Russians strongly suspected United States intervention and that if it were a fact he must expect trouble. Don Gregorio advised a close watch on all party leaders who were known to be disaffected but had not yet declared themselves.