Chapter XII: Part 12

"The Ambassador," Barrows smiled. "He's been tearing his nice white hair since you got back from Havana. You put him on an awful spot, you know."

"It'll do him good, the old bastard. Do you know what Tabio told me about him a few days before he died? He said that he was with Skidmore at a dinner a few days after Germany invaded Russia and that Skidmore said he was glad that now the Russians would get what was coming to them."

"Not really?"

"Lavandero was there. He'll back me up." Hall stopped. "Say, I have an idea," he said. "There's one thing I can do for G-2. I can write a report on Skidmore. I'll do it right after the elections."

"Oh-oh! It'll mean trouble with the Spats Department."

"Spats?"

"State. But you make your report, and give it to me. I'll turn it in with the rest of my stuff when I get back. Why not? You're a civilian. The worst that can happen to you after you write the report is that you'll have trouble getting passports and visas."

"I don't give a damn," Hall said. "And I'll do something else. You gave me an idea. I'm still a civilian, you said. Swell, then I won't be climbing over anyone's brass hat if I see to it that a copy of the report reaches the White House."

Barrows leaned back in his chair, laughing. "He told me that you threatened to do just that," he said. "But he's just a harmless old duffer, Hall. He told me he wanted to shake your hand."

"He can shove it. Did you meet his daughter?"

"Once. She doesn't like you."

"Ever receive any reports in Miami about her?"

"You know I can't answer that question, Hall."

"O.K. That means--oh, I guess it means that you got reports that she sleeps around plenty. But her political life is more important to G-2 than her sex didoes."

"Gossip?"

"Fact. She's secretly engaged to be married to the man who killed Fielding. The Marques de Runa. But don't worry--he'll never be brought to trial for it. He's in Spain. Left by Clipper over a week ago with his chauffeur, the man who actually ran poor Fielding down."

The officer from Miami laid his pipe down on the desk. "This is pretty serious," he said. "I don't want to get it all by ear, old man. Would you mind talking while it was taken down? Not only about Margaret Skidmore. About everything you can give your Uncle about the Falange? Facts, names, addresses, opinions--the works. I brought a young lieutenant with me from Miami; he was a crack stenographer in civilian life. How about spending a few hours with us?"

"Sure. I can give you the rest of the day, if you like."

"I'd like it fine. But if you don't mind--not here."

"O.K. Dr. Gonzales' house. It's on the outskirts of the city, and we'd be alone."

* * * * *

Hall spent the rest of the day at Gonzales', dictating to the lieutenant. While they worked, Duarte phoned to tell him that Gamburdo had formally conceded the election. "What are your dinner plans?" he asked the Mexican.

"None. I have to finish a long report on the elections before I eat. Where and when are you eating?"

"I don't know. I thought that for sentimental reasons I'd eat with Jerry and Pepe and Vicente and Souza at the Bolivar. Lobo is tied up for the evening."

"I'll join you when I can, Mateo."

Later, when the American officers left, Hall tried to reach his friends by phone. Arturo, the desk clerk, told him that Souza had taken the day off and that Pepe and Vicente had been called up with the reserves. He gave Hall a list of numbers where he might possibly find Pepe. Hall finally reached him at the Transport Workers' Union. "Can you eat with me tonight?" he asked.

"Yes. Where are you? Our officers just handed us our new orders. I am to be your driver and Emilio your guard."

"What?"

"Sergeants Delgado and Vicente at your orders, sir."

"Is this official?"

Pepe laughed heartily. "Official," he said. "We can show you our orders."

"I am at Gonzales'. Can you pick me up now?"

"At once."

The sergeants were there in fifteen minutes. Pepe now drove an Army car whose color matched his uniform. They drove to the University for Jerry.

Soldiers were everywhere, patrolling the city, guarding both the Axis diplomatic buildings and the commercial houses owned by known fascists. The streets were crowded with civilians. They hung around the cafes, listening to the latest election bulletins over the cafe radios, or they congregated under the government's loud speakers in the plazas and the broad avenues. Even though Gamburdo had already conceded his defeat, the people awaited the results of each new count, cheered each new electoral repudiation of the Falange candidate. Everywhere the sidewalks, the gutters, the doorways of stores and buildings were littered with whole or tattered copies of the leaflets exposing Gamburdo and Ansaldo.

"We gave them a licking they won't forget so quickly," Pepe chortled.

"Yes, but they are still alive, Pepe. They took a licking in the last Spanish elections, too."

"_De nada_," Vicente said, grimly. "Let them try to make a second Spanish War in our Republic. We'll drown them in their own blood."

Jerry was waiting for them on the University steps. "Matt, it was amazing. Translate for me, will you? I think Pepe and Vicente would like to know, too. As soon as the word was flashed to the wards that Lavandero won the election, the serious cases started to pull through, and the others are just about ready to dance. I've never seen anything like it!"

Duarte joined them as they were finishing their soup. He was pale and upset. "The Axis got the news pretty quickly," he said. He picked up a bottle of brandy, poured a half tumbler and downed it in a gulp.

"For Christ's sake, what happened, Felipe?"

"The Nazis," he said. "This afternoon, a few minutes after Gamburdo quit, a Nazi submarine deliberately sank one of the Republic's unarmed freighters. It happened less than thirty miles from where we're sitting. That isn't all. The ship had time to wireless for help before she sank. And the Nazis waited until the rescue boats had picked up the survivors before they surfaced again and sank each of the boats with their deck guns."

"When did you find out?"

"Hours ago. I kept quiet because I wanted to make sure about Souza. Now it's been confirmed. He was on one of the rescue boats. He is dead."

"Why, the dirty ..."

"Wait, Mateo. There is something else. Don't go. You had a call from Radio City in New York. They want you to broadcast to America at ten o'clock tonight. The Siglo station has the hook-up here."

The clock on the Bolivar dining-room wall read eight-thirty. "I'd better go right over," Hall said. "Eat and wait for me here, Felipe. Don't bother to drive me, Pepe. I'll walk. It's less than two blocks. Have some more brandy."

"I'm going with you," Jerry said.

* * * * *

"_Come in, San Hermano ..._" Over the long-wave from Radio City.

The station announcer gave Hall his signal. Hall mopped his face with his sleeve, glanced at his notes. "For a few hours this afternoon here in San Hermano," he said into the microphone, "most of us believed that virtue is its own reward, that the truth by itself is the most powerful weapon in the hands of a democracy.

"At three o'clock this afternoon, the fascist candidate for the presidency of this Republic conceded defeat in an election marked by the dramatic revelation of his ties with the Falange in Madrid and the Nazis in Berlin. There was no bloodshed, no disturbances. Democracy had scored a bloodless victory in San Hermano.

"For thirty-five minutes and twelve seconds, the elections remained a triumph for the ideals of the late president, Anibal Tabio, a man in the traditions of our own Abraham Lincoln. It was Tabio's life-long belief that 'Ye shall know the truth and it shall make you free.' But Tabio, like the leaders of the last Spanish Republic, placed too much faith in the power of good and decency and progress and had too little fear of the fascist powers of evil abroad in this world.

"At exactly thirty-five minutes and twelve seconds after the fascist Gamburdo conceded the elections to his Popular-Front opponent, the people of this Republic learned that the world has grown much smaller since Lincoln declared that no nation could exist half slave and half free. Today what Lincoln had to say about one nation goes for one world. This one world, our one world, is now torn by a global war. It is a total war. The people of this democracy struck at the Axis today by overwhelmingly defeating the Axis candidate at the polls. It took the Axis exactly thirty-five minutes and twelve seconds to answer the democratic people of this free nation. The answer was delivered by the torpedoes and deck guns of a Nazi submarine lurking thirty miles from the docks of this port...."

He talked on, glancing at the station clock frequently. There was a lot he wanted to cram into his fifteen minutes. If possible, he hoped, he would be able to get in a few words about the big feature story on the front page of the bulldog edition of _El Imparcial_.

It was a long and lachrymose account of how Mexico was suffering because the food of the nation was being rushed to the American armed forces and how the war had forced inflation and shortages on that suffering Catholic country whose people had no quarrel with Hitler and no love for the Godless Stalin.

The red sweep-second hand raced Hall through his account of this story. "It is no accident that this piece of Axis propaganda should be featured on page one of the nation's leading pro-Franco paper tomorrow," he said. "This is the Falange line for Latin America. This is the unnecessary acid the Axis is preparing to inject into the very real wounds Latin America is suffering and will suffer from this total war."

The announcer standing at the other microphone drew his hand in front of his own throat. Hall's time was up.

Jerry rushed into the studio from the anteroom, where she had been listening to the talk over the studio radio. She kissed him, took his hand as they went downstairs and into the narrow street which led to the Plaza de la Republica. "Where do we go from here, Matt?" she asked.

"God alone knows. Let's get married tomorrow. That's one thing we'd better do while we still have a chance. I used to think I belonged in the army. The army doctors rejected me for combat service; I'm too banged up. Twice I tried to get into Intelligence, the first time before Pearl Harbor. They wouldn't touch me with a fork. Saturday, Colonel Barrows hinted that they were less squeamish about accepting anti-fascists into G-2. He hinted that maybe I could get an Intelligence commission."

"I'll go in as a nurse if they accept you, Matt."

"That's a big _if_, baby. But if they don't, we can go on fighting the fascists in our own way. We won't get Legion pins and ribbons and bonuses after it's all over, and the only uniforms we'll ever get to wear will be decoy outfits like the one I wore when I left Havana. But the fight will be the same, and the enemy will be the same. And we won't have to worry about getting stuck on an inactive front. We can pick our fronts.

"When it's all over, we'll go to Spain and we'll spit on Franco's grave and I'll show you where a great man named Antin died and where a kid lieutenant named Rafael killed fourteen fascists with one gun and we'll walk down the Puerta del Sol in Madrid with the most wonderful people I've ever known--what's left of them--and we'll dandle black-eyed Spanish kids on our knees until our guts begin to ache for kids of our own and then we'll make a kid of our own and fly back so he'll be born in Ohio like his folks and grow up to be a good anti-fascist President or at least an intelligent American Ambassador to San Hermano. Ah, I'm talking like a fool, baby, talking like a drunk in a swank bar off Sutton Place."

The loud speakers on the lamp posts of the Plaza suddenly came alive.

"Attention, everyone! Attention!"

"Wait," Matt said. "Something's up."

"Attention! This is the Mayor of San Hermano speaking. Eduardo Gamburdo, wanted for the murder of Anibal Tabio, has fled the country. The Cabinet and a quorum of the legislature, meeting at six o'clock tonight, have unanimously voted that President-Elect Esteban Lavandero should be sworn in as President immediately. At ten o'clock tonight, President Lavandero took his oath of office from the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in the Presidencia. I will repeat this announcement. Attention...."

Hall translated the announcement. "Now Lavandero has been introduced. I'll translate as he goes along."

"Citizens, members of the Popular Front parties, members of all parties," Lavandero began. "This afternoon, at three thirty-five o'clock, a submarine which has been positively identified as being of German nationality torpedoed a ship bearing the flag of our Republic within our national waters. The ship was sunk. The survivors and the men on the boats which set out from shore to rescue them were shelled by this submarine. The losses have been enormous. At the last official count, we had lost over eighty citizens, all victims of fascist bestiality.

"Tomorrow, I shall go before the Congress and speak for a declaration of war against the Axis. Tonight, my first official act has been to promote Major Diego Segador to the rank of Colonel for outstanding services to our Republic, and to appoint him Emergency Chief of the Defense of San Hermano. I have asked Colonel Segador to speak to you now."

Hall put his arm around Jerry. "The war has come to us," he said. "We don't have to look for it any longer."

"Citizens," Segador said. "Our city is in sight of a wolfpack of Nazi submarines of undetermined size. The lights of our city are therefore at the service of the fascist enemy. If you are on the streets, go into your houses, or into the nearest cafes or other buildings. If you are indoors, put out your lights, wherever you are. In five minutes, the street lights of the city will be turned off. This announcement is being recorded, and will be repeated for the next thirty minutes, or as long as one light remains lit in San Hermano. Our lights are the eyes of the submarines--we must blind their evil eyes.

"Soldiers on duty, remain at your posts and await further orders. Soldiers off duty, report at once to your commanding officer. Sailors off shore ..."

They stood together, watching the people hurry off the streets, watching the lights go out in the lamp posts, in the cafes, in the houses of the old Plaza. They remained near the loud speaker, listening to the announcement repeated, listening to the national anthem, listening, finally, to the dark silences of the night. They remained frozen to the cobbles of the Plaza de la Republica which had been born in the days of the empire as the Plaza de Fernando e Isabel and whose cobbles bore the shadows of the edifices of the Conquistador generations and the Segura generations and the democratic decade. Monuments of all manners of life rose in dark, brooding piles on all sides of the Plaza; the slave life and the life that was half slave and half free and the free life which now had to fight for its freedom. In the dark Plaza, they could almost hear the young heart of the city, of the Republic, beating slowly, steadily, confidently.

"Darling," she said, "I'm not afraid of anything any more. I'll never be afraid again."

"I know," he answered. "That's what this war is about, baby. It's the war of the people who are not afraid to live their own lives. Let's go back to the Bolivar, baby. Pepe and Vicente are still expecting us."

Pepe and Vicente were sitting in their lorry, waiting for them.

"_Companeros_," Pepe said, "Duarte is waiting for you inside. You will all have to stay at the hotel tonight."

"That's all right, Pepe."

"We have to go back to our barracks," Vicente said. "We are called."

"Yes, _companeros_," Pepe said. His uniform looked less strange on him in the blackout. "We cracked the thick skull of the Falange today, _companeros_, but the black heart is still pumping."

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