Chapter VII: Part 7

Hall put the mouth of the opened bottle to his lips, tilted his head back. "God," he said, "Pepe is right. Let me make one phone call, and then I'll spill it. I've got to get it off my chest before I blow the top."

He reached the Vardieno girl on the phone. She was so sorry. The lists had all gone down to the Hall of Congress. Anyway, all requests for foreign writers had to come through their embassies. That was the Press Chief's new ruling.

"That's fine. That settles it," Hall said when he put the phone away. "Now I must ask the Ambassador to approve me for the press gallery."

"Sit down, Mateo," Duarte said. "I can wait a full hour if necessary." He put a bottle of cold beer into Hall's hand. "Tell us about it."

"I'll wait outside," Pepe said.

"No. Stay with us, Pepe. I want you to know the facts. Do you both remember that I was waiting for a letter from Havana? Well, I got it. Two letters, in fact. They told me what I wanted to know about Ansaldo." He drained the second bottle and then told them what had happened to him at the Embassy.

"Don't bother with him," Duarte said. "You don't need his permission. I'll give you my diplomatic invitation and my carnet. The uniform is all I need to get through the gates. You'll sit in the diplomatic gallery with me."

"Great."

"You can even act as Skidmore's interpreter."

"_Con mucho gusto!_"

* * * * *

Riding to the Hall of Congress, Duarte drew Hall's attention to the loud speakers fastened to the poles in every plaza. "The government has bought over a hundred speakers in the past two weeks," he said. "I know, because most of them were bought in California and I had to O.K. their transit duty-free through Mexico. I think our friend Gamburdo is up to something today."

Hall looked at a knot of grim-faced _Hermanitos_ standing under one of the speakers. "I think the people suspect it too."

"We couldn't get an advance copy of the speech at the Embassy, Mateo. Usually, Tabio releases advance copies to the press and the diplomatic corps on the morning of the speech."

"I wonder why?"

"I can only suspect the worst. After the speech, can you come back to the house with me? I want to hear what happened to you. Commander New called me this morning and told me that he had asked the police to investigate Fielding's death."

"What? On the phone?"

"Yes."

"Oh, the damned idiot! Now even if the police are not fixed every damned fascist in South America knows that the Fielding thing went wrong!"

"It's too late for cursing now. Let's talk about the whole picture after the speech."

The plaza facing the Hall of Congress was filling up with citizens who had come to hear the speech over the public-address system. Scattered through the crowds were men carrying signs reading "_Viva_ Eduardo Gamburdo." Duarte pointed them out.

"Every one a Cross-and-Sword ruffian," he said. "I used to see the same faces while the Falange was legal. They then wore the blue shirt."

"I can't see their faces," Hall said.

"I've seen their faces. Three months ago Lombardo came to San Hermano to address the C.T.A.L. convention. The same gang showed up with their filthy signs, only this time the signs read: '_Viva_ Christ the King' and 'Go back to Bolshevik Mexico, you Dirty Jew' and 'Down with the Commune of the anti-Christ' and other lovely things. I know them."

"Something is happening," Duarte said when they were in the building. "Everyone is too quiet." They followed a military escort to the Mexican box.

The Mexican Ambassador was tense. "I don't like it," he said to Hall and Duarte. "Why is everyone so quiet on the rostrum?"

"They look as if they've seen a ghost," Hall said.

Duarte studied the faces of the officials on the flag-decked rostrum. "Where's Gamburdo?" he said. "Has anyone seen him?"

"I saw his car parked outside when I came in," the Ambassador said.

"What's that? Do you hear it, Mateo?"

"Sounds like distant thunder, Felipe."

"It's not thunder. It's the crowd. What have they got to cheer about?"

"Gamburdo's cheer leaders must have gone to work."

"I don't like it," the Mexican Ambassador said. "I don't like it."

A gavel fell on a block. At a signal from the President of the Senate, a military band hidden in one of the caucus rooms began to play the national anthem. The music was piped in to the great hall over the public-address system.

The gavel called the Congress to order. A clerk called the roll, the Senate head started the parliamentary ritual. Then the band started to play the national anthem again, this time without a signal. A door behind the rostrum opened.

In the doorway, flanked by his two young sons, Anibal Tabio sat in a wheel chair. His closest friend, Esteban Lavandero, the Minister of Education, stood behind him. Slowly, the chair was wheeled to the rostrum.

"Members of the Congress," the Senate Chief shouted, "The President of the nation has come to deliver his annual address."

_Chapter ten_

There were two shouts. On the floor, one of the Senators screamed "_Viva La Republica!_" At the same moment a young voice in the press gallery yelled, "_Viva_ Don Anibal Tabio!" and in the great hall every man sprang to his feet. The low distant thunder of the crowds in the Plaza had now swelled to a roar whose joyous overtones poured into the Hall of Congress through the doors, the windows, the steel and marble walls themselves. Senators and Deputies of the Popular Front Parties were the first in the hall to find their voices. "_Viva_ Don Anibal!" they shouted, applauding wildly, laughing, yelling, embracing one another, wondering if the tears in their eyes could be seen by their colleagues. The anti-Tabio Congressmen remained on their feet, their hands moving in the motions of applause, their hearts cold and sick. Somehow, Eduardo Gamburdo had found his former place on the rostrum, was now standing and applauding with the other people in the hall. The signals had been crossed. The dead President had come to life. Anibal Tabio was sitting before the chromium microphone, serene and unmoving, his paralyzed legs neatly covered with a light Indian blanket.

Outside, the crowd had begun to sing the national anthem. The legislators, the reporters, many of the Latin American diplomats in the visitors' gallery took up the words. Hall glanced at his neighbors. Tears flowed down the cheeks of Duarte and his chief. A few rows away, Skidmore and Orville Smith, correctly dressed in formal afternoon wear, stood stiffly at attention, their eyes firmly riveted to the strange tableau of Tabio and his entourage.

Someone thrust a huge bouquet of orange and blue mountain flowers at the invalid in the wheel chair. His son Diego accepted the flowers, laid them tenderly on an empty chair. Diego at fifteen was heavier than his father had ever been, darker, more like an Indian peasant than the son of Anibal Tabio. His brother Simon, who now accepted the second bouquet, was an eighteen-year-old replica of Don Anibal himself. Tall, lithe, he had the same fair brown hair, the same thin spiritual face as the father. Lavandero, standing behind Tabio's chair, had the dark, brooding face of a Moor. His shock of black hair started at the peak of a high, broad forehead; his large black mustache failed to dominate his thick, strong lips. He was rubbing a hairy fist in his eyes and talking softly to Tabio.

The President, at fifty-three, seemed to have aged ten years since Hall had last seen him. His hair had turned gray, and everything about him was thinner than ever before in his life. In Geneva, Hall had always wondered what would have happened to the thin, delicate frame of Anibal Tabio in a tropical hurricane. Now, even from the gallery, Hall could see that Tabio had grown so thin that the high cheek bones which had always marked his slender face now stuck out like two sharp points, almost burying the deep-set gray eyes. Tabio sat quietly in his wheel chair, smiling at friends on the floor, looking first to Diego then to Simon, gently patting the hand of his older son when the boy put his hand on the father's fragile shoulder.

The ovation continued when the singing of the national anthem was completed. Tabio turned to Lavandero, whispered a few words. The Minister of Education held his hands, palms out, toward the assemblage. "Please," he said. "Please."

Guests and legislators took their seats. In another room, a drummer dropped his cymbal on the floor. It rent the sudden silence of the great hall, and then its echoes were stilled.

Anibal Tabio squeezed the hands of his sons, drew a deep breath, and faced the microphone before him.

"My countrymen," he said, "this is the third year in which I have had the honor of addressing you at this solemn hour. A week ago, I would have said that my chances of preaching my own funeral sermon were better than my chances of opening this, the fifteenth free Congress of our beloved Republic.

"But since then ..." he leaned forward, his long chin jutting pugnaciously forward as he gasped for breath, "since then many things have come to my ears. I have heard rumors. Strange and disturbing rumors about what was going to happen today. I need not repeat these rumors to you. You have all heard them."

Hall looked at Skidmore's face as Smith translated Tabio's words.

"Yes, you have heard them. When they came to my ears," Tabio said, "I thought: What is happening? Who dares to challenge the mandate of the people? Who dares to speak of perverting the will of the people? It was then that I knew, as never before, that a President's place is with the people. If I could sit up in my bed and talk this way to my sons, to my dear friend Esteban Lavandero, then I could sit up in this chair before you, the chosen representatives of the people.

"My good friends, this may be the last time I will ever speak to you ..."

Shouts of "No!" rang all over the hall.

"Hear me, friends. Hear me and mark well what I say. Once this nation honored me with the post of Minister of Foreign Affairs. As your Minister, I crossed the ocean. I went to Geneva. I went to Spain, from where we have derived so much of our culture, our language, so much of our personality as a people.

"We are today a free people, not the colonial vassals we were in the days of Imperial Spain. But Spain, too, had become a free nation in 1931. I saw the free Spain at the hour of her birth, when the hated Bourbon heard the voice of Spain's millions at the ballot and fled to the empty pleasures of a decaying society abroad. I also saw the free Spain in the hours of her agony. It was at that hour that I beheld for the first time the ugly bloodless face of fascism.

"It is a cold, metallic, impersonal face, my countrymen, the face of an Agusto Segura grown to superhuman power, the maniacal face of a mad killer who suddenly finds all the world's horrible instruments of destruction in his idiot hands. I saw this beast grow strong on the blood of free men, and I wept for a gallant people who, for a few brief moments, had presumed to control their own destinies.

"Yes," Tabio said, his hand pointing across an ocean, "yes, I wept for Spain, but through my tears I began to see my own native land, saw my own people enjoying this precious freedom. And at that moment I knew that I must dedicate whatever remained of my life to doing all that was in my power as a man and as a citizen to keep the beast of fascism from gorging on our young Republic.

"I have fought that fight to this very moment. But more important than anything I have done has been the magnificent unity of our peoples in their determination to struggle against fascism in all of its black forms. It has not been the President who has led the people in this great crusade. No, my countrymen. It has been the people who have created and given their mandate to the President, to the Congress."

Tabio had never learned a single orator's trick. As a statesman, he retained all the speaking habits he had originally formed during his early years as a young professor of history at the university. Teaching, he once explained, was the process of thinking aloud. And at this moment, in what he guessed would be his last speech to the nation, Anibal Tabio returned to the concepts which had gone into his great book on the relationships of people to government in modern democracy. For the better part of thirty minutes, he explored these relationships again. After all these years, the professor was back in class, patiently expounding his ideas to a new set of faces.

"Well, that is the state and the people. I have not told you anything new. You have heard this all before from me." Tabio was laughing softly, and at himself. "But that is what happens when the people elect a pedantic professor as their President. Instead of a speech, they get a long, dry lecture."

Tabio paused, frowned at the people who sat hushed in the hall. "Have you forgotten how to laugh?" he asked. A few loyal followers tried to laugh. "Good," Tabio said.

"But I am not finished, my countrymen. I have spoken of the ideal democratic state. Many of us like to feel that we have achieved this state. That perfection is ours. This is dangerous thinking. Of course, we are not as imperfect as a certain newspaper in San Hermano and a certain organization which has usurped the symbol of brotherly love as its emblem"--this time he drew some real laughter--"we are not as imperfect as they would have you believe.

"But even if we were the most perfect state in the world, today this would mean very little. Our chances of surviving, of progressing until the Republic of Man became even more attractive than the Kingdom of God, our chances of surviving at all would still be obscured. If our nation were some remote island in the skies, whirling on its own axis, remote from all other lands, perhaps then I would have no fears for our future.

"We are not this remote planet unto ourselves. We share a world with a hundred nations, a thousand races. I do not regret that we are part of this world. I think we should rejoice in our membership in the world's family of races. But we must not lose sight of the fact that our nation, no less than any other nation, be it free or fascist, is part of this strange family.

"We must never forget that the great war which started in unhappy Spain in July, 1936, was not a war between good and evil in Spain alone. It was a war not of two Spanish ideas but of two fundamental world ideas. It was the start of the universal death struggle between the slave-world ideas of fascism and the free-world ideas of political and economic democracy. It was the start of the fascist war against freedom that has now spread all over the world."

Tabio glanced at his two sons. He accepted a glass of water, smiling at the legislators in the front rows as he drank. "Freedom," he said, "is there a man who does not know the meaning of the word?" Before he returned to the theme of the world war which had started in Spain, he explored the full meaning of freedom in modern times. It was only after he had delivered a profound essay on freedom which shook Matthew Hall until the American felt a lump rising in his throat that Tabio picked up the earlier threads.

"In Spain, then, the forces of freedom suffered a heavy loss. But what of those small men with narrow little minds who held the reins of so much of the world's power while Spain bled? What of these tiny statesmen, these sleek somnambulists who held lace handkerchiefs before their narrow mouths and laughed while fascism marched in Spain? What of these wretches who, through the immoral instrument called non-intervention, sought to end freedom in Spain in the criminal conviction that the blood of Spain alone would satisfy the fascist beast?

"History was not long in giving the lie to these gentry. The beast who had whetted his insatiable appetite in Spain now started almost immediately to claw at the world. It was in April of 1939 that Madrid fell. By September the beast belched and turned on the very creatures who had covertly and overtly helped him subdue Spain."

That Tabio had not raised his voice at this point, that he in fact spoke more softly, accentuated all the more the scorn and the anger in his heart.

"Nations have fallen to the beast," he continued. "Nations of meager freedom, like Poland. Nations of great and traditional freedom, like France. The war has spread over the world like a Biblical plague. Russia could not escape it. Nor could our great sister Republic, the United States.

"Yes, North Americans now have felt the pain, the anguish, the power of Axis treachery. No nation can escape this war.

"My countrymen, we are not an island in the skies. We are a sovereign nation in the same world, on the same earth, in the same waters, sharing the same era as the United States, England, Russia and China. It is not for us to choose whether or not we can stay out of this war. That choice the world does not permit us. Our only choice is the determination of what our role must be in this war.

"There has been strange talk in our land lately. There has been strange and deceitful talk of neutrality. Has it not occurred to any of you that those in our midst who howl the loudest for neutrality, who show such a sudden concern for the lives and safety of the humblest Indian peasant, that these pious seekers after neutrality have never before worn the white dove on their family escutcheons? Who are these peaceful gentlemen who grow pale in the presence of bloodshed? Are they not the same persons who as young men were proud to be officers in the armies of Segura, who laughed and drank as they ruthlessly shot down defenseless miners in the northern provinces?

"Who are these sudden pacifists in our Republic? Are they not the very devout gentlemen who sent money and rum and cigars to the fascists in Spain during the Spanish phase of this war? Are they not the very men who sent cables of homage to Hitler and Mussolini after the shame of Munich? Are they not the very men who even now wear the medals of Nazi Germany, of Blackshirt Italy, of Falangist Spain--who wear these medals proudly while they chortle over the blood of dying Russians on the Eastern Front, of dying Americans on the Bataan peninsula?"

Tabio stopped. His eyes searched the press gallery, then fixed on Jose Fernandez. He pointed a graceful hand at the publisher of _El Imparcial_.

"I ask you," he said, "are they not the very men who write in their papers that Adolf Hitler, whatever be his alleged faults, is waging a holy crusade on behalf of Christian civilization against Marxist atheism?"

Tabio continued looking at Fernandez, but Lavandero shot a fierce scowl at Ambassador Skidmore, who seemed bewildered and unhappy as Smith translated Tabio's questions. The Ambassador, too, had seen the object of Tabio's shaft. Angry, uneasy laughter broke out on the floor. A cry of "Long live the United Nations!" from one of the Popular Front deputies was immediately answered with the shout "Long live Christ the King" from the public gallery.

The President, who had heard both shouts, turned to the gallery. "Who are these neutrals?" he asked. "Are they not the same fascists who hope to fool God by casting their fascist swords in the image of the Cross of Jesus? Are they not the fanatics who, rather than see the Axis beast destroyed, would first destroy the freedom and the dignity of their own land?

"They lie. There can be no neutrals in this world war. He who calls himself a neutral is either a fool or a fascist. And the fine gentlemen who prate of neutrality are very clever men."

The Popular Front Congressmen rose to their feet, applauding and adding to the din with their shouts of agreement. They were joined by a few of the independents. The delegates of the rightist coalition remained in their seats, their arms folded across their chests. But they were not quiet. As the ovation for Tabio continued, loud cries came from the ranks of the men who kept their seats. "Down with atheism!" shouted one rightist Senator. "We have no quarrel with any other nation!" another yelled. "We will not die for Godless Russia!"

"Long live democracy!" a Popular Front deputy answered. "Long live the anti-fascist United Nations!"

Esteban Lavandero pleaded with the Congress for silence.

"My countrymen," Tabio said, "there can be no neutrality in this war. There is one official neutral in Europe. His name is Francisco Franco. We all know what this hypocritical neutrality really is; how it shields the vile aid that fascist Spain is lending to the Axis. But this is as it should be. Franco is a fascist, and today fascism must triumph all over the world or be crushed forever.

"But what of our own nation, what of the twenty nations of Hispanic America in this war? What is our stake in this world struggle?

"If the Axis wins this war, we, like all other nations, must of necessity lose our political freedom. And if we once lose our political democracy, we must begin again the long, bitter struggle to win it once more before we can even begin to dream of creating an era of economic democracy.

"If the United Nations win, if world fascism is crushed forever, a new world era of economic democracy must begin at once. It will not come easily. The defeat of the Axis will not immediately bring in its wake the millennium. It will, however, give the common people of the world the final realization of their great power. In this lies the inherent strength of political democracy. For democracy is not a static thing. It can grow and bring in the era of economic democracy, or it can falter and give way to fascism.

"The common people of the world, today fighting and dying behind the banners of the United Nations, have served notice on history that they will not rest until fascism has been swept from the face of this earth."

Tabio was now speaking with both arms raised, his hands reaching out to everyone. "My countrymen, I have said enough. I know that I have spoken the thoughts that are uppermost in the minds of that great majority of our citizens who have given their mandate to you and to me. In a week, you will have to frame the mandate for the delegation which will speak for our Republic at the forthcoming conference of the nations of the Americas. Speak out! Speak out honestly, speak out openly. Speak as the spokesmen of a democracy. Speak as the citizens of the embattled united democracies of the entire world must speak at this hour. Speak for the free men of the free world. Speak firmly, for you will be speaking not only for the future of our own Republic but for the future of all mankind."

The Cuban Ambassador, whose seat was nearest the podium, crossed the plush rail and rushed to Tabio's wheel chair. He fell to his knees, embraced the President. In a flash, Eduardo Gamburdo left his own place and copied the Cuban's gesture. The rostrum became crowded with dignitaries bent on paying the same homage to Anibal Tabio. The envoys of the Latin American democracies, the delegates of the Free French and the Spanish Republican juntas, the leaders of the trade unions and the chiefs of the Popular Front parties milled around the wheel chair as the pro-democrats in the hall added their voices to the cheers of the crowds in the Plaza. Duarte, his soft raspy words choked and unintelligible, embraced Hall.

Lavandero was pulling the wheel chair back toward the door of the Speaker's Chamber. The well-wishers of the President followed him into the room. For a moment, the people in the auditorium applauded the blank door through which Tabio had vanished. Then young Simon Tabio returned to pick up the flowers on the chair, and his father's supporters cheered louder, punctuating their cheers with cries of "Long live Don Anibal!" The youth streaked into the room behind the platform.

"Let's get out of here," Hall said.

"I've got to go to my office," Duarte said. "I have to prepare a report on the speech. Join me, and then we can talk."

"Pepe can drive us over."

"No one drives today," Duarte said when they reached the visitors' doorway.

The streets were jammed thick with people. Hall had never seen so many people in San Hermano before. It was as if every house, every building in the university, every shop, every wharf, every school had been turned inside out and its people poured out into the streets. Whole families in their best clothes, trolley drivers in their work uniforms, longshoremen in their dungarees, even peasants from the other side of Monte Azul in their brown-cotton trousers and their broad-brimmed straw hats milled along the sidewalks, the pavements, the Plaza, the trolley tracks. Cars, taxis, trucks, wagons, trolleys were parked crazily all over the place.

Pepe, like a hundred other drivers within a block of the Hall of Congress, was standing on top of his car, waving the flag of the Republic, shouting, "Long live the United Nations! Long live Don Anibal! Long live the Republic!"

Crowds formed around each parked vehicle, joined the cries of the drivers. The roofs of the trolleys were jammed with groups of students and motormen waving flags or the banners of their student societies and their unions. Thousands of Hermanitos, kids in overalls, housewives, lawyers, shopkeepers wandered through the crowds with framed portraits of Anibal Tabio which an hour ago had hung from the walls of their homes, their offices, their shops. The pictures of Tabio ranged from formal photographs and oil paintings to crude charcoal drawings and pictures torn from the daily press.

Hall and Duarte made their way to Pepe's sedan. When he saw them, he put the flag in his left hand and with his right hand he pointed to something on the ground on the opposite side of the car. "Look!" Pepe shouted. "Down here!"

A pile of torn Cross-and-Sword placards lay on the cobbles inside a ring of laughing young Hermanitos who were urinating on the signs. Some of the boys in this ring showed signs of having been in a fight.

"The fascists ran away," Pepe laughed. "Don Anibal's speech split their filthy ears."

"I'll see you later," Hall told Pepe.

"Wait!" Pepe shouted. He leaned over the side of his cab. "Boy," he said, "boy, where is that flag for the American _companero_? That's the one. Thank you, boy." He lay down on his belly, stretched a huge paw into the crowd around the remains of the Cross-and-Sword banners. When he stood up, he had a small American flag in his hand.

"Wonderful," Hall said, taking the flag. "I guess it's also the Yankee day to howl."

A crowd formed around Hall and Duarte. They saluted the American flag, saluted the Mexican uniform.

"Long live the United States! Long live Mexico!" the crowd shouted, and the two men answered, as one, "Long live Don Anibal!"

The crowd separated, let them through. They walked a few steps, and then another crowd formed around them. Again they listened to cheers for the United States and Mexico, again they responded with their cheer for Tabio.

"Jesus H. Christ," Hall said. "This is the first time I've carried an American flag in the streets since I was a Boy Scout in Ohio."

"It will do you good, Mateo."

"I like it. But try to make anyone believe it back home!"

At the fourth block Hall and Duarte started to detour around a trolley car which had stopped in the middle of a crossing. A dozen hands reached down from the crowded roof. "_Companeros!_ Take our hands! Climb up! Take our hands! We want a speech!"

"Long live Mexico! Homage to Colonel Felipe Duarte, Counselor of the Mexican Embassy and hero of the war against the fascists in Spain!"

Duarte had to join the crowd on the roof of the stalled train. He made a short speech about Mexico, Republican Spain, and the greatness of Anibal Tabio.

Two more blocks of happy, cheering Hermanitos. Vivas, salutes for the American flag and the Mexican uniform. Men in dungarees and heavy shoes saluting the flag and the uniform with clenched fists. Young women and old men who embraced Hall and Duarte. Even an ancient with a nicotine-yellowed white beard, who wiggled out of one crowd, tore the flag out of Hall's hand, kissed it, and then handed it back to the American with an embrace and a viva for Voodro Veelson.

* * * * *

They were relaxing over a beer in Duarte's office when the explosion came.

"What the hell...?" Hall cried.

There were two explosions. A little one, like the crack of a distant artillery piece in the mountains and then a louder, deep-toned whoosh of a noise. They had both heard such noises before.

"Remember that noise, Mateo?"

Hall was on his feet. "Do I! Only one thing makes a noise like that," he said. "Direct hit on a gasoline tank."

"Exactly."

While they were washing, the sun had begun to set. Now a new sun had risen in the skies of San Hermano, risen at a point about a mile north of the Embassy. A great sheet of flame had shot from the ground, stabbing at the purpling skies, straining to leap clear of the round heavy blobs of black smoke which rose from the same place and surged over and around the fires.

The streets were more crowded than they had been when Hall and Tabio left the Congress. New signs had been added to the placards and portraits of Tabio which the people carried. Tremendous sketches and blown-up photos of Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin and Chiang Kai-shek, nailed to frames with handles for two men, bobbed over the heads of the crowds. Duarte, from the balcony, asked the people on the street what had happened. They thought it was a victory bonfire.

"The hell it is, Felipe. Let's see for ourselves."

"I must stay and write my cable. You go and then come back here."

"Can you lend me a car and a chauffeur?"

"You couldn't drive a car through these crowds. You'll have to walk. Leave through the back way. It opens on a narrow street leading to the Avenida de la Liberacion. You'll save time."

Hall found the narrow street deserted. He set out at a fast pace, his eyes on the flames and the increasingly heavy puffs of smoke. The shouts of the crowds on the broad avenues and the plazas followed him up the small street. Over the cries of the Hermanitos came the wail of the sirens, the clamor of the bells on the American fire engines the city had purchased a few years back.

The crowd half-pushed, half-guided Hall to the entrance of the Ritz. He ducked into the lobby to catch his breath, bought some cigars at the stand, lit one, and then decided to have a quick drink.

Margaret Skidmore was at the bar with Giselle Prescott and a young man Hall had met at the Embassy ball. The Prescott woman was wearing an immense wheel of a white hat. She was very drunk.

"What's up?" Hall asked.

"The Reds blew up a church," Margaret said. "How are you, Matt? I heard that you were out on a monumental bender. Too many women?"

"Too much alcohol." Then, to the man with the girls, "Didn't we meet at the Embassy party? My name is Hall."

"I'm the Marques de Runa."

"Spanish?"

Margaret answered for him. "No. Not exactly. The family had the title revalidated in 1930."

Giselle Prescott shuddered over an emptied glass. She whispered something about rum, romanism and rebellion.

"What's eating her?" Hall asked Margaret.

"Gin and communism. She's allergic to burning churches."

"My father phoned the governor of our province and demanded soldiers to protect the family estates," the young Marques said. "It is scandalous. We hear that they've already raped a nun and killed two priests. My father says that if El Tovarich ..."

"Who saw the church burning?" Hall interrupted.

"Everyone, senor."

"Any of you?"

Silence. "Any of you?" he repeated.

"It was anarchy," the Marques said. "When El Tovarich started to rant in Congress today the Reds swarmed into the city from the wharves. They tore a religious poster from my cousin's arms and beat him within an inch of his life."

"Is that a fact?" Hall was staring at the gold emblem of the Cross and Sword in the Marques' lapel. "That's too bad."

"You see what I meant," Margaret said. "Now you understand me, Matt."

"Sure. Now I understand. How about you, Giselle?"

"What about me? I'm filing for the WP today."

"Then you'd better come with me. I'm going to have a look at this burning church. Might be good color stuff."

"I don' wanna look," she said. "Gives me hives. Besides, I know all about it anyway."

Hall put his arm through Margaret's. "Let's you and me look, then," he said.

"Don't go!" the Marques cried. "You're both dressed too well. They'll kill you."

"I'd better not go with you, Matt."

"But I insist. I'm going and you're coming with me."

They watched de Runa stiffen. "Now don't be a child," she said. "Hall will bring me back intact."

"Don't go," the Marques said.

Hall freed his hands. For a moment he thought he would have to use them on the Marques. Then Margaret tugged his arm. "Let's go if we're going," she said. "You wait right here for me with Giselle, Freddie. I'll meet you here in half an hour."

The fire was five blocks from the Ritz. There was a half block heap of glowing brick and rubble. Behind the rubble stood an old church, one wall partially blown out. The firemen were playing streams of water into and around this hole.

"God!" Margaret said. "The stench!"

"Oil. My guess is that a thousand gallons of oil went up in smoke."

In the crowd standing at the rim of the fire lines, a taxi driver turned around and glanced at Hall. "Some fire," he said.

"What happened?"

"Garage. The Phoenix Garage went up in smoke. Blew a hole in the Cathedral when it exploded."

"The Phoenix Garage?"

"That's what it is, senor." The driver moved closer to the gutted rubble.

"You wait here, Margaret. I'm going to talk to the firemen." He crossed the fire lines, found his way to the engine captain near the main hydrant. When he returned to Margaret, he gave her a complete report. "The fire chiefs say that the Reds didn't blow up the church at all," he said. "Seems as if the gasoline tanks in the garage caught fire by themselves."

Margaret laughed. "Don't tell Gis," she said. "She's already cabled a story to the States that the Reds burned the church."

_Chapter eleven_

Duarte knew about the Phoenix Garage before Hall returned to the Mexican Embassy. "Commander New dropped in while you were at the fire," he explained. "He told me."

"Does he know anything else about it?"

"Not about the fire. But he does know a little more about Fielding. He says that Fielding's files have been cleaned out. There wasn't a single copy of any of Fielding's reports when the British officials opened the files."

"But the British have all the dope, Felipe. Fielding's reports--at least the ones he showed me--were all carbons of the reports he made to his Embassy."

"I know that. But if his reports are now in the hands of the Falange, the Axis knows it too. It will give them time to cover their traces. It will also put the finger on you. One of the things they did find in the office was a note Fielding had made reminding himself to prepare copies of certain reports for you, Mateo. That might explain what happened to you in that Falangist cafe on the waterfront the other day. Fielding had already been killed when you were drugged."

Hall lay down on the couch in Duarte's office, took his shoes off. "I'll be all right in a few minutes," he said. "I just need about ten minutes of this."

"I'll get some cold beer."

"No. I don't need it. Listen, Felipe, do the British know that I was drugged?"

"I don't think so. I didn't tell them, anyway. I wouldn't, without your permission."

"Maybe you should tell them. It might do some good. But what are we going to do now that we know about the fire? I still feel like a drunk on a merry-go-round."

Duarte laughed. "You can always get off and go home," he said.

"No. It feels worse when I get off."

"I did something this morning, Mateo. I sent word to General Mogrado through one of our diplomatic couriers."

"Mogrado? Of the Spanish air force?"

"He's living in Mexico City now. I asked him to rush everything he could get on Ansaldo. The largest Spanish Republican colony in the hemisphere is in Mexico, you know. I figured that surely there must be one man among the exiles--a doctor, a former Army officer, someone--who could give us the dope on Ansaldo."

"Sounds like a possibility."

"We'll see."

"Don't let me fall asleep here. I've got things to do."

"Then get some rest. I've got to complete my report." Duarte turned to his typewriter, glanced at what he had written on the sheet in the machine. "Mateo," he said, "I'm meeting Dr. Gonzales in an hour. We're going to try to reach Lavandero with your Havana information on Ansaldo. Will you join me?"

"No. I have some unfinished business myself. I think that before the night is over we'll know a lot more about Ansaldo."

"What are you going to do?"

Hall stifled a yawn. "I'm going to take a chance and shoot the works on someone who can talk. It might work."

"Be careful, Mateo. You look very tired."

"I'll turn in early. Let's have breakfast at your place tomorrow, eh?"

Hall found a phone booth in a tobacco shop near the Embassy. He called Jerry.

"I knew it would be you," she said. "I was waiting for you to call, you dog."

"I hope you're hungry," he said. "I'm taking you to dinner."

"I'm famished. Where are you?"

"I can be at the Bolivar in about fifteen minutes. Meet me in the lobby?"

"All right. But hurry. And just in case you've forgotten what I look like, I'll be wearing a red carnation."

He became part of the growing multi-directional parade in the streets. Nightfall had brought colored torches to the hands of many of the Hermanitos, and hundreds of new huge portraits of the four leaders of the United Nations. There was a new pattern to the street festivities. Now whole groups of Hermanitos, each marching behind a picture of one of the four statesmen, made their way through the crowds to the embassies of the United Nations and then to the Plaza de la Republica, where they paraded their signs and their sentiments in front of all the government buildings and the Presidencia. After that, the marchers joined the milling groups of celebrators who just seemed to move around in slow circles, singing, cheering, loudly wishing a long life to Anibal Tabio and the United Nations.

The darkened Plaza was packed, torches in the hands of hundreds of the crowd bringing more light to the ancient square than had been seen there since the nation had been forced to begin conserving its fuel. Hall cut through the crowds toward the Bolivar, too excited to sense his fatigue. This is a night I shall long remember, he thought, this is the night I will tell my children about if I ever have any children. This is the night that I saw the power of the common people, the night I saw democracy take to the streets of a nation's capital and tell the world that fascism's day of cheap triumphs is done. This is the night of the meek who shall yet inherit the earth.

Through the shoulders of the crowd, he could see Jerry's red hair. As he drew closer, he saw that she had two little girls in her arms. The children were crying wildly, the tears choking in their throats and coursing down their contorted faces.

"There, there," Jerry was saying to them, "everything will be all right. You're only lost. We'll find out where you belong." But the strange foreign words only added to the terror in the frightened hearts of the girls.

"What happened?" Hall asked Jerry.

"They're lost. I was afraid they'd get trampled or something, Matt."

He spoke to the kids in their own language, soothing, silly words. Then he took them in his arms while Jerry dried their tears with a perfumed handkerchief. Between sobs, the little girls told Hall that they had slipped out of the house to see the fiesta and had been having a swell time until the crazy lady swooped them up, talking crazy words and keeping them from going on their way.

"Do you know where you live?" he asked them. They pointed toward their own house. "We will take you there. And don't call the senorita a crazy lady, little ones. She is your friend."

"Are they lost?" Jerry asked.

"Hell, no. Just tourists. Let's get them home, first."

The girls lived nearly a mile from the Bolivar. They watched the paraders in silence while Hall carried them to their house, but when he reached their block the girls insisted that they could walk the rest of the way. "No," he laughed, "I'm taking you right to your door. And I'm waiting in the street until you come to your window and throw me a kiss."

The girls, who had less than a dozen years between them, giggled and hid their heads in his shoulders. "We won't throw you a kiss," the older of the sisters said, shyly. "You aren't our _novio_."

"These little devils!" he laughed to Jerry. The girls began to squirm in his arms. "No, little ones," he told them, "I won't make any more crazy talk like the senorita."

"This is our house."

He put them down on the first steps. "Now hurry," he said. "Upstairs with you, and be quick!"

They scrambled up the stairs. "They're sweet," Jerry said. For a brief moment, the faces of the two little girls appeared at the open window on the first floor. Then the ample figure of a woman in a white cotton dress loomed behind them.

"Let's scram before they catch it," Hall said, but he was too late. The shrill cries of the girls, as their mother flailed their behinds with a righteous hand, followed Hall and Jerry down the street.

"Me and my Good-Neighbor policy," Jerry said. "It's all my fault."

"They deserve it. What would you do to your kids if they joined a stampede?"

Jerry had to laugh. "The same thing, I guess. But what's all the celebrating about? Is it the local Fourth of July?"

"No. But I have a funny feeling that in years to come it might be. Your patient started it."

"Tabio?"

"President Anibal Tabio. He decided not to die today. He got out of bed and addressed the opening session of the Congress and called for war on the Axis."

"You're kidding me again, Matt."

"The hell I am. I was there. I saw him myself."

"But he's paralyzed, Matt."

"He spoke from a wheel chair." He told Jerry about the speech, and as they walked through the dense crowds toward a restaurant, he translated some of the signs carried by the people who swarmed on all sides of her.

"_Abajo el Eje_--that's down with the Axis. And that one says Long live the United Nations. _Mueran los Falangistas_--death to the Falangists."

"What are they, Matt?"

"The Spanish fascists. Hadn't you heard of them before?"

Jerry shook her head. "I still don't see how he got out of bed. He must have done it on nerves alone. I was at the lab all day with Marina and Tabio's X-rays."

"He delivered a great speech, Jerry."

"I'll bet he did. I guess nothing can stop this country from joining the democracies now, Matt."

"No," he said. "Nothing but Gamburdo--if Tabio dies."

They had to wait on a street corner while a line of students carrying red torches snake-danced across their path.

"Where are we eating?" she asked.

"I know a wonderful place facing the sea wall. It's very plain, but the food is stupendous. We'll have to walk, though."

"I'm game. It's fun walking in these crowds tonight. It's almost like New Year's Eve in New York."

The restaurant was packed. The waiter had to put an extra table on the sidewalk for Hall and Jerry. "It's better from here anyway," Hall told her. "We can see the ocean and get away from the din inside."

A hundred happy men and women jammed the interior of the restaurant, singing to the music of the small orchestra, toasting the slogans which were all over San Hermano this night. Hall invited the waiter to drink a toast in sherry to Don Anibal, and then he ordered lobster salads and steaks for Jerry and himself.

"I missed you," he told Jerry and, hearing his words, he was startled to realize that he meant them.

"You're just lonely. But I like to hear you say it."

"No. I really missed you."

"What's wrong, Matt? You look all in."

"Nothing," he said. "I've had a long day. What do you think of this lobster salad?"

Small talk. Make small, polite talk about lobsters and cabbages, talk about the weather and your neighbor's garden, talk about anything before you start talking love talk and then you'll forget why you have to talk to her at all. "You're beautiful tonight," he said, softly.

"I'm ignoring you, Hall."

Good. Banter. Nice cheap cafe-society banter. Have to play the game as she is played; silly brittle talk about nothing. Break her down, keep her off guard, keep your own guard up. Talk about the lobster. Talk about the steak. Make vacuous wise-cracks over the coffee. Now she's pleased with the guava pastry. Be the man of the world. Talk about guava.

"You're talking down at me, Matt. I told you once before. I'm not really stupid."

"God, I'm sorry," he said. "I must have been groggy all through dinner."

"You sounded it."

"Can you walk?"

"I'm too full."

"Let's sit on the sea wall. It's the pleasantest spot in town."

Hall bought a paper from a passing newsboy. They walked along the sea wall for a block, and then he spread the paper out on top of the wall and lifted Jerry to the broad ledge. They sat facing the sea, not saying much of anything.

"The beach looks so clean," she said. "Do you think ..."

He leaped to the sand. "Take my hand," he said, "and bring the paper with you." He spread the papers on the sand, laid his jacket over the papers, and sprawled on the makeshift pallet. Jerry sat near him, took his head in her lap.

"Poor Matt! You're so tired. Want to tell me about it?"

"About what?"

She stroked his face with soft, gentle hands. "About what's bothering you, darling. Something terrible is happening to you."

"There's nothing wrong."

"You're such a bad liar, darling. I can see it in your face."

"Only that?"

"It's enough. That is, when you care for a guy."

"You're sticking your chin out, baby."

"No, I'm not. You're really a very gentle person. But you want to be hard as nails, don't you, Matt?"

"I don't know what I want to be, baby. I'd like to see the world a good place for little guys who like republics. I'd like to kill the bastards who are fouling up such a world. It sounds very big, I know. But I'm not big. I'm a little guy and I like the world of little people. Or don't I make sense?"

"I think I understand you, Matt."

"Later I'll read you Tabio's speech. Or at least the high lights, in English. You'll get a pretty good idea of the things I believe in."

"What was it like on the other side, Matt? In the war, I mean. Or don't you want to talk about the war?"

It's now or never, he thought. Tell her about the war, tell it to her straight. If she's ever going to see it, she's got to see it now. "I don't like to talk about it," he said, "but I will. I guess I owe it to you to talk about it. I was there when it started, and I kept hollering that it had started, but no one would believe me."

"In Poland?"

"Hell, no! In Madrid. The summer of '36. I reached Madrid in the fourth week of July, and by September I'd seen enough of the Nazis and the Italians to know it was World War Two." The words came easily, the whole fabric. Tabio had told the story as a historian. This was the other way it could be told, the way of the eyewitness, of the partisan. He told her everything, about the fighting in Spain and about the slaughter of the innocents; about the grotesque ballets of death and disintegration on the green tables of Geneva; about the arrows of Falange, reaching out from the festers of Spain to the New World. Everything but the role of Ansaldo.

"Now," he said, "I think you can guess why I'm so bothered about this war, why I sometimes act as if I have a very personal stake in it. Please try to understand what I mean, Jerry."

She was silent for a long moment. "I think I do," she said. "For the past few days I've been thinking about the war. Ever since--oh, you know since when. I've been thinking that if I don't do anything else, maybe I'll join the Army as a nurse when we leave here."

"You've got it bad, haven't you?"

"I don't know what I've got, darling. All I know is that I don't have the right to be a Me Firster any more. Do you think I'm right about that?"

"Baby, listen to me. You don't have to go to Bataan to get into the war. It's spread everywhere. The front stretches from Murmansk to Manila to San Hermano. And it's the same front."

"But what can I do here?"

Hall drew a deep breath. "Let's both have a cigarette," he said. "This is going to take some telling." He sat up, faced the girl, took her hands and held them firmly. "Now, what I'm going to say might sound harsh, Jerry. But you'll simply have to believe me."

"What is it, Matt?"

"How much do you know about Dr. Ansaldo?"

"Only that he's a nice guy. He's never made a pass at me, he behaves like a gentleman, and he's one crack surgeon. Don't tell me he's no good, Matt. I just won't believe it."

"You'll have to believe me," Hall insisted. "What do you know about Ansaldo's past? Do you know where he was during the Spanish War?"

"I haven't the faintest idea. Do you know?"

"Sure, I do. I saw him." Hall described his first meeting with Ansaldo. As he spoke, Jerry abruptly withdrew her hands. Trembling, she backed away from him, started to get up.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

"I wish you hadn't made love to me," she said, simply. "Now I feel cheap--and used."

"Don't say that. I ..."

"You know it's true. You're not just another newspaperman. And you don't give a damn about me. It was Ansaldo you were interested in from the beginning. That's why you were on the same plane with us on the way here. And that's why you ..."

"You mean I'm a G-man? Don't be absurd."

"Don't make it worse by calling me a fool. I liked you. I liked you a lot. Don't make it worse now, Matt."