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Face to the Sun

Geoffrey Household

CONTENTS

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter One

My Dear Mayne,

You will be astonished to read that this document from, I believe, your respected friend is the confession of a sneak-thief and – at least in the eyes of North Americans – a communist revolutionary. Your own people know my age, name and birthplace from my passport, and have no reason at all to wave goodbye to a law-abiding and favourite foreigner; on the other hand, British police have a record of my crime but do not know my name and can have only the vaguest description of my personal appearance. So I shall never cause you any embarrassment so long as interested parties are unable to combine the two.

My crime, anyway, was the minor one of petty larceny, of no interest to the Bank of England, the Foreign Office or MI5. One of my motives in setting down on paper a true account of its results and my reactions to them is that you should read it, seal it and deposit it in your inviolable safe to be made public in case of my death, or that of any of my collaborators, by suspected violence. A lesser motive is to demonstrate to the British police – should they ever discover my guilt and contemplate extradition – that my crime was purely impulsive and that I had no notion of the value of the swag. In these days when prisons are overbooked and magistrates inclined to be lenient, I think justice might well be satisfied by a sentence of community service which could vary – according to the skill of the defence and the after-lunch geniality of the Bench – between unblocking the drains of an Old People’s Home and sawing firewood for the Police Station.

I was, as you know, an orphan with neither money nor influence but enough intelligence to gain a place at a provincial polytechnic from which I emerged three years later to look for a job on the strength of some insignificant letters after my name. So I answered advertisements – among them, one from a chain of Andalucian hotels on the Costa del Sol which required a British analyst in residence.

Their guests, it appeared, had an annoying habit of putting the blame for intestinal upheavals on the food. The Spanish medical authorities, after careful analysis, pronounced that there was nothing whatever wrong with it. However, the gang of financial crooks, gangsters and drug smugglers who stretched themselves, luxuriously farting champagne over the once pleasant beaches of southern Spain, put no trust in the official verdict; they demanded that an independent British analyst should be in residence. The hoteliers provided one. They knew very well that the stomach upsets of the prejudiced Britons were not due to shellfish but to drink and the devil; and that no high-powered scientist was needed. Anyone cheap who could wear a white coat with authority and handle a makeshift laboratory would do. They took the first who offered – me.

I settled in as comfortably as the hotel cat, well fed and housed, petted by the guests and with no serious work except to learn Spanish. I was surprisingly popular with the local doctors whose expensive and violent remedies I recommended, though both they and I realised that the kitchens were spotlessly clean and that a plain pick-me-up would be sufficient.

Our most distinguished guest in the summer following my arrival was an African general, known as the Father of his Country, who had found that the opportunities for spending his money at home were limited while the opportunities for accumulating it were not. He exploded on us with a small suite, male and female, and occupied half a floor of the hotel. His size and colour were both too overwhelming for our normal collection of criminals and package-tourists but he took to me for four good reasons. I admired his genial and excellent manners; I could, by this time, speak reasonable Spanish and he could not; he had some trouble in making water and feared that he might be incubating the clap. (My polytechnic studies were enough to assure him that he was not.) He was intrigued by a view of the golf links from his bedroom window and I was able to give him his first lessons in that noble game.

After a month of this intimacy he offered me the post of Government Analyst at ten times the salary I was paid by the hotel with a bungalow shaded by the forest and the requisite staff. I did not hesitate. Of course I realised that I should be dependent on a dictator’s goodwill but I was prepared to risk it, for I had gathered from his suite that the army idolised him and that rash opponents were seen, if at all, floating downriver indistinguishable from the dung of crocodiles. I accepted the post.

And here my story really begins with two famous drug companies, one American and one Swiss, in competition with each other throughout the Third World, where the liberality of the bribe slipped by the manufacturer’s local agent to the buyer had more influence than the curative value of the product whatever their respective laboratories might claim. On this occasion the Americans landed the contract, having very sensibly appointed as their agent the nephew of the Minister of Health. But unusual discretion was required. The Father of the Country, as the General preferred to be called, had recently assured the commercial world that under his government the revolting vice of corruption was at an end and, if discovered, would be punished by a long term of imprisonment.

The shipment of Mirabiloil, the much publicised remedy for piles – an inconvenience to which the youth of the nation were very liable owing to their indelicate habits – was unloaded into a lighter which was promptly towed upriver and consigned to the Headquarters battalion of the General’s favourite regiment. It seemed unlikely that the well-fed army should be suffering from an epidemic fierce enough to justify such an inordinate quantity of pile lotion and so, as a moderately conscientious Government Analyst, I felt I should know the reason. I had no intention of interfering with the General’s sources of income. What I had in mind was weedkiller and the ecology. I had begged the Father of his Country not to spread poisons about so indiscriminately and had possibly made such an impression that he had kept the importation secret; so I borrowed the customs launch and discovered that the lighter had discharged at the remote wharf of the General’s country estate, where he was checking a barricade of crates with an air of satisfaction.

Only then did it occur to me that instead of taking the newly forbidden bribe for signing the contract he had bought the whole shipment to be sold for his personal profit. The National Bank, of which of course he was also a Father, could not know it. The Minister of Health and his nephew could be trusted to keep their mouths shut. I apologised for disturbing his leisure and assured him that I was far too innocent to have ever suspected such ingenuity. That half-humorous remark was unwise. He took it as the contemptuous insolence of the white man towards the black – to which he was always sensitive even when it didn’t exist – called me a spy and a liar and ordered me to leave for London by the next day’s plane or have my tongue analysed in my own bloody laboratory. I prudently chose the former, abandoning the salary due to me and leaving behind my few possessions to be sold at a police auction for what they would fetch. That would be nothing. The Chief of Police had once envied my carpets which I had too innocently shown him.

Enough of these complexities! On arrival in the centre of London I sold the contents of my travelling bag which allowed me to stay a fortnight in a cheap boarding-house. I spent the days in a desperate search for a job and was unsuccessful; without references I could not hope for employment, and even if I was allowed to tell my story, the prospective employer cut the interview short assuming that there was no smoke without fire. I had no family and after working abroad ever since I left the polytechnic no acquaintances to whom I could appeal, let alone close friends.

Now, this larceny which I mentioned would never have been committed if I had had anything to eat for forty-eight hours after my fortnight was up or anywhere to sleep but a park bench. It is proudly claimed that a person cannot starve in England; nor can he if he knows the ropes. But if he doesn’t, to what charitable body should he appeal? What story, true or false, will get him a free bed? How disgusting will it be? I accuse myself now of timidity. I should have asked some fellow sufferer sleeping rough. At least he could have directed me to a pawnshop where I could sell my respectable suit and buy some filthy old rags to back up my claim to be utterly destitute. I shrank from any such acceptance of fate. My only asset was my appearance of prosperity. I did not fit into any of the generous nets spread out to catch the needy, although the only possessions I had retained were shaving tackle, a toothbrush and – thank God! – a clothes brush.

My clothes were still good enough for me to appear a possible customer, so I entered Harrods and walked aimlessly through the long halls with a vague and desperate idea of finding some shining counter where samples of exotic food – any kind from fat-free ferret livers to a small carton of camel milk – were handed out gratis. No luck. I wandered on and up in a lift, hunger for once providing energy, until I arrived in some sort of luxurious coffee lounge, full of well-dressed women. On my way round the cake-and-coffee zone I passed close to a table where sat two of them, evidently mother and daughter, excitedly chatting away about invitations to dinners and theatre parties which were awaiting the mother who had just flown in from South America. The daughter spoke English, the mother American with a slight Spanish accent. They had ordered an unnecessary selection of cakes and goodies, so I loitered nearby – looking impatiently over distant tables as if expecting to find a missing wife – in the hope that they might leave something edible on their table when they got up.

The older woman was rotund, swathed in black silk, just like an old-fashioned lodging-house landlady except that every inch of her, every sleekness, every flow proclaimed that she had been dressed by some artist who, unable to give beauty to such exuberance of flesh, had rightly settled for distinction. Her companion, young enough to allow bosom and backside to be discreetly emphasised, leaned towards her across the table as intently as an ant milking its queen. On the floor at the side of the queen’s chair was a black bag of crocodile leather with silver fittings.

Leaving them to their enjoyable discussion of the scandalous behaviour of modern youth, I moved away unnoticed. As a first thought, it occurred to me that the older woman deserved to lose the crocodile bag; as a second thought, that the risk of picking it up myself was acceptable. About a foot of the shoulder strap was clear of the bag and on the floor; if I could time my approach for a moment when their attention was completely absorbed by their mutual vivacity there was a chance that neither of them might notice the gentle foot of a passer-by stretched out to catch in the loop and the hand which lifted the bag quickly and silently off the floor. If any of them did notice I could pretend to have tripped over the strap. The unavoidable danger lay in the twenty seconds or so it would take me to reach the nearest exit and disappear.

The foot and hand skilfully obeyed. The following twenty seconds were the worst. I was sure I had not been seen by the two women. But from some other table? Not daring to hurry, I listened for the yell of STOP HIM. I had never stolen anything in my life and so had none of the technique and experience of the pickpocket. I had been mad, I screamed to my panicking self, to trust beginners’ luck. Theft could not be so easy. I waited for the rush of an attendant or policeman. I had a flashed vision of the waiting cell. I swear I even heard the door close on me. Then I was through the exit, dripping cold sweat. The bag must surely have been missed by now.

To get rid of it was the next task. I hadn’t thought that out, and it didn’t occur to me that the terror which seemed timeless to me was still only twenty seconds to the two chatterers. At the end of the department was the sign GENTLEMEN. I nearly broke into a run, but forced myself to march straight ahead for safety, like a gentleman indeed. I locked a door on myself and collapsed on to the friendly seat.

I now had privacy in which to think undisturbed. With my heart beginning to slow its beat, I opened the bag to see if it contained any money. Money was all I wanted. In a pocket at the top was a wallet stuffed with a wad of notes which I took with a relief which overwhelmed all feelings of fear and guilt. Below were three flatfish cases of expensive leather. When I opened the smallest I found, to my horror, that on a nest of blue velvet lay a tiara of diamonds and exquisite emeralds. She can hardly have been strolling in public with that. My guess was that she had been met on arrival by her daughter and had sat down with her for coffee, cakes and a gossip, before placing her jewellery in Harrods’ safe deposit.

I left the other cases unopened. I had landed myself in real trouble. She must have missed the bag by now and alerted the lounge with her screams. In those twenty seconds I might with luck have drawn no attention to myself for there was nothing exceptional about a man carrying large business documents in an oversized portfolio. On my way to my present refuge, however, I had been seen by dozens of shoppers. Could one of them describe me? Very vaguely. The black bag would be clearly remembered once the alarm had gone out, but nothing recognisable about the individual who was carrying it through a moving crowd. An attendant in the gents’ lavatory would have been deadly, but none had been visible.

The next move was to get clear of Harrods as soon as possible. I placed the bag by the side of the seat – an outlandish home for that tiara – unlocked the door and cleared off. Then morality took over. I had what I needed. Had I any right to deprive the old girl of immensely valuable jewels, leaving them where anyone could pick them up? My conscience was evil. She could obviously spare the cash I had pinched; she could not spare the tiara. On my way out I glanced into the coffee parlour. The loss had been discovered. Two managers, the waitresses and the occupants of neighbouring tables were all standing up in a huddle and all squealing at once. I left them to it, descended the stairs with dignity and found myself next door to the sports department. My eye was caught by a range of canvas cricket bags. Inside one of those the jewel cases could be hidden and probably even the bag itself would fit. Why not? If it was left in its place, the chap who found it would have the hell of a time clearing himself. Hypocrisy? Yes, my true motive in recovering the swag was a thought of the reward that would be offered for its return. I bought a canvas bag and, for good measure, a bat. Then I went cautiously back to GENTLEMEN. Apparently, nobody had chosen my compartment for a visit. I locked the door, filled my cricket bag and left Harrods with the light steps and squared shoulders of a county bowler.

A taxi drew up at the side door and discharged its passenger as I came out. I jumped into it and told the driver to go to Lords. If and when the police saw a possible connection between the missing black bag and the cricket bag and traced the taxi-driver, my destination would indicate that the theory was wrong. As soon as the taxi had driven away from Lords I took another to Soho, and there, guarding my bag between my feet, recovered with a half-bottle of claret and an ample meal.

At last, with a full and grateful belly, I counted the money in the wallet which came to over six hundred pounds. The next task was to buy an ordinary suitcase together with pyjamas, clean shirt and underwear, and in another invaluable public lavatory pack into it the contents of the cricket bag, which was no longer a saviour but a clue. I deposited it in the left luggage office at King’s Cross station, and then found a room and bath – safer and cheaper than a hotel – in the respectable neighbourhood of Gower Street.

God, it was heaven to feel clean! Bathed and behind a locked door, I opened the two remaining jewellery cases. The first contained a curious golden disk of filigree work, attached to a golden chain, to be worn as a pendant. It reminded me of Inca work, what little remains of it, though it was far too small, only about fourteen inches in circumference. The rays round the edge showed that it was an image of the sun, but on the face was a circle of little golden disks. What it was I did not then know, but I sensed some mystical quality which did not spring wholly from the beauty of the design. In the centre of the sun was a large emerald which had been clumsily added to the lovely work of the goldsmith. That told me a lot about its owner. She lacked natural taste. She could be the wife or mistress of a multi-millionaire, possibly an industrialist, possibly a politician. The third case contained comparative trivialities: necklace and ear-rings to match the tiara. Given the evidence of the sun, I would have been prepared to bet that the original owner or his wife or both had met the usual fate of leaders of the opposition. With the comforting thought that the lady of the crocodile bag might have, strictly speaking, no more right to the acquisitions of another Father of his Country than I had, I slipped between spotless sheets and slept for fourteen hours.

I woke up in the morning very conscious of one mistake. I was faced with a problem which must be very common among professional thieves who know how to plan for its solution beforehand. I did not like to leave my suitcase, with its cheap and unsatisfactory lock, unattended in my room. When the girl came in to clear away the breakfast things and make the bed she found me just sitting in my new pyjamas and doing absolutely nothing.

She asked if I had anything to send to the wash, and I replied that when I had unpacked I would sort it out. That sounded as if I had quite a lot of dirty linen left from travel.

‘And if you would like your suit dry-cleaned, it will be back by this evening.’

‘Does it look shabby?’ I asked.

‘Well, not exactly shabby, but it does look as if you had been on a long journey.’

This wouldn’t do at all. I was slightly suspect. I guessed that she had been prompted by the proprietress to find out whether the suitcase was full of clothes or empty. There was nothing for it but to re-equip myself from top to toe, then pack what I was wearing plus a few extras and leave my one piece of baggage unlocked.

Meanwhile, what was I to do with the three jewellery cases which would not fit in any of my pockets? The laundry bag was the obvious answer. If they found it temporarily missing from the bathroom they could think what they bloody well pleased.

What was certain was that I had to economise until I could lay my hands on the reward. At least another £150 had to be spent. When I had found the £600 in the black crocodile bag I was nearly crazy with relief for it seemed to me that my troubles were at an end. They were not; they were just beginning. I was sitting on a vast sum of capital which I dared not use. All jewellers and pawnbrokers would have been warned to look out for those unmistakeable treasures.

I dressed, put the black bag and its contents into the laundry bag and started off to the shops. My first purchase was a largeish briefcase with a formidable lock to which I transferred the valuables, less one emerald ear-ring which I kept to identify myself as the correct possessor of the jewellery and able to return it. After depositing the briefcase at a bank, I bought smart trousers and a gentlemanly coat, a dressing-gown, a few paperbacks, paper and envelopes to fill up space, and set off with my parcels to Gower Street, managing to reach my room unseen. With the laundry bag now holding the foul remains of my forty-eight hours’ distress and my suit laid out for cleaning, I could now face the landlady and search the advertisement columns of the more expensive dailies for the expected offer of a reward.

Chapter Two

It was the third day of living with my criminality, and I was becoming accustomed to it. Half of me was ashamed; the other half not without pride in accomplishing, as an amateur, an act which would have dismayed a professional. An act, yes. It irrevocably separated the self which had stolen from the self which would not dream of doing any such thing. Right and wrong had little to do with it. My pride was in action.

I rang for breakfast and the newspapers. When the girl arrived I gave her my suit to be cleaned and my wash to be washed with proper geniality. She did not seem to have noticed the temporary absence of the laundry bag. Clad in my new dressing-gown like any mature student on a postgraduate course at London University round the corner, I opened the paper for a leisurely look through the advertisements. I was amazed to see, occupying a quarter of the front page, a picture of my lady of Harrods in her resplendent youth. She was Juana Romero, daughter of a Mexican father and a Californian mother.

It was not the theft of the jewellery which was news, but the victim. In her youth she had been a famous film actress; the toast of the two Americas they called her. One reporter only had recognised her married name from the police reports, and he deserved his scoop. The beautiful brown eyes had been swimming with tears as she told him of her loss. She had been dreaming of her past without a thought for the bag at her little feet. In her time she had been squashed into shape by the arms of Rudolph Valentino himself – the reporter put it more delicately – for her figure was then of the type which fascinated teenagers, Hollywood producers and the American military. She had been, wrote the emotional hack, the envy of all women. I doubt it. The exuberant display probably started the later craze for weight reduction. And there she was on the front page in a ‘revealing’ swimsuit; it hadn’t a chance of being anything else.

She had married the Father of her Country. He was then only a colonel, but the pair of them were so popular that the cathedral had been packed with the press, the generals and the politicians, all of them haunted by a foreboding of what this marriage of celebrities might bring about. It took him three more years to reach the top by a revolution rather less bloody than usual. She had done well for her husband and herself. The paper listed her loss as the tiara of emeralds and diamonds, the ear-rings and necklace. She had not said a word of the golden sun. I remembered my earlier conjecture that it could have been acquired from a museum. Now that I knew who she was, that was indeed possible.

I shall call the lady’s country the Republic of Malpelo, for it would be shameful to brand a charming and impoverished little state with meekly tolerating a Father of the Country. Fatherly methods of government are much the same in Africa and Latin America, and I had learned them by experience. I had been surprised that the African had bothered to denounce corruption and supposed that it was for the benefit of international financiers, for nobody within the country would ever have believed that the American firm had won that contract on reliability alone. All the same I liked that great, black, bemedalled bugger until the last time I came in contact with him. He had passed through Sandhurst and remained an officer and a gentleman with a respect for power and none at all for life. He was at his best when he had an excuse to appear British and would chat to me as if we were sitting in a London club while I was stimulated by the added thrill that I might be about to leave Government House on a stretcher for a faultlessly arranged post-mortem. He should have known that I was accustomed to fatherly administration and trusted me to keep my mouth shut; it had been quite unnecessary to give me twenty-four hours’ notice to leave the country.

So my earlier instinctive conjecture of the reason why the lady of Harrods had not revealed the loss of the golden sun to the police had not been far wrong. It must be well known to historians of the Spanish Conquest and had to be returned, minus the tasteless central emerald, to the shrine from which it had been borrowed. Of course the loan might have had an indefinite term. Requests from a Father of the Country are generally obeyed without argument.

The natural explanation was that her husband didn’t know that she had taken it abroad. In Malpelo she probably wore it only for prestige – a gala night at the opera, for example, or a party for the generals of the Republic on Independence Day. It emphasised her unity with Malpelo and her position as official Mother of the Country. The folly of taking it with her to Europe would have been due only to feminine vanity: the vision perhaps of an invitation to dinner at Buckingham Palace. The sun would certainly have made a spectacular lid to her cavernous cleavage.

I had been wondering how on earth I could return her jewels and collect a reward without walking straight into a police trap. The position now was somewhat different. I was the only person in London – apart from her daughter – who knew she had with her a national treasure and had lost it. Obviously she did not want to risk the unpredictable anger of a Father of the Country. Nor did I. So our interests were the same: to keep the British police right out of it. Besides the romantic story of her past, that obliging paper had given me the essential information that she was staying at Claridge’s. There I had to contact her. I spent the morning in the British Museum examining Andean exhibits. There was nothing resembling my sun, but I came across a casual reference to a golden disk which had been the banner and supreme god of the Inca Empire. So again I gave myself a very satisfactory lunch in the hope that claret and a brandy would continue to provide inspiration. They did. My sun could be a miniature or model of the god.

Wearing gloves I tore off the headline of the newspaper report and wrote on the back of it in small capitals and with my left hand:

I SEE THAT THERE WAS ONE LOSS WHICH YOU DID NOT MENTION.

WHAT AM I TO DO WITH IT?

REPLY TO HARRY. BOX 715, SAME PAPER.

I posted this to Miss Juana Romero at Claridge’s, choosing her maiden name since I was pretty sure that she would receive a number of such letters from cranks or former friends or lovers, inspired by the newspaper article. She would read these from curiosity or in the hope of running across an old companion, and if the police had advised her to show them all suspicious communications she could pocket mine before handing them over.

Two days later I opened the paper eager to see if feminine ingenuity had any proposal for exchanging the sun for money which would ensure there were no police witnesses.

HARRY. ASK FOR LADY MCMURTRIE.

On the face of it that offered no guarantee and was detestably risky. Lady McMurtrie’s could be packed with detectives. But in my sudden excess of nervousness I had forgotten that on no account must police be allowed to know of the loss of the golden sun. She had been intelligent enough to understand that this opening move was to arrange time and place for a meeting where the transaction could be completed in a privacy essential to us both.

I spruced myself up, took the plunge and asked at Claridge’s desk for Lady McMurtrie.

‘I believe she is expecting me,’ I added.

I was shown up to a room on the fifth floor. I recognised Lady McMurtrie at once. She had been at that table in Harrods. When the door was opened, she sprang forward with every appearance of greeting an old friend with delight. As soon as it was safely shut again she stood with reserved neutrality facing me. She was one of those striking women, tall and fair with a faultless figure but too stern to be immediately desirable. It was evident that she was also a woman of courage and character. I might have come to knock her out and add to my loot.

‘What are you?’ she asked. ‘British?’

‘Harry. Box 715.’

‘Any other – well, identification?’

‘Yes, an ear-ring. But if I produce it you have only to ring for the hotel detective.’

‘My dear man, is it likely that I would?’

‘And you are?’

‘I am Juana’s daughter. She will be here in a minute. Now, tell me who else is behind this blackmail.’

‘No one. You do not recognise me? I passed you twice in Harrods.’

‘You expect me to believe that you were working alone?’

‘I assure you, Lady McMurtrie, I had no idea what the black crocodile bag contained. Neither of you were paying any attention to it. I was starving and so I stole. I expected only money. When I found the sun and read that your mother did not report its loss to the police I realised its value and, I must admit, was a little frightened. A dictator has a long arm.’

‘Yet you look to me like a man of honour.’

‘If I could afford to be a man of honour, I would give your mother what she needs, for she is in worse trouble than I, if I am not mistaken.’

‘And if we allow you to keep the tiara?’

‘Useless, I cannot sell it, or even a piece of it, without being immediately arrested.’

There was a knock of distinctive rhythm on the door.

‘Well, here is my mother.’

La Presidenta sailed in. It was clear that she, too, was unaware that she had ever set eyes on me before. She was dressed to kill – this time in deep crimson. She had not forgotten that she was once Juana Romero to whom nothing that she badly wanted could be denied. She was more subtly provocative than in Harrods and for a man whose taste was for dimension rather than delicacy she may still have been enticing. I bowed respectfully.

‘Lady McMurtrie found it hard to believe that I did not know what your bag contained when I picked it up,’ I said. ‘But if I did know I must also have known that you had come to England with the sun, and known that it was in the bag. Doesn’t it seem to you more likely that you put it down where it was a temptation and that you yourself gave away its importance by not mentioning the disastrous loss to the British police?’

‘I’d rather have my tiara back,’ she replied.

‘Even if it meant that Cayetano could accuse you of making away with his precious model?’ her daughter asked her with gentle irony.

‘I have never submitted to blackmail, Carlota, and I will not start now.’

Lady McMurtrie must have been well accustomed to putting the brakes on her mother’s obstinacy since early days in Hollywood.

‘Then Harry will hand the sun to the British police anonymously which will do none of us any good,’ she said, and coming straight to business, added to me, ‘What is your asking price?’

The intrinsic worth of the sun seemed to be surpassed by its political value. As I had no idea what that was, I quoted low.

‘Shall we say two hundred thousand pounds for the lot?’

La Presidenta swelled with such indignation that I listened for some complex of underwear to explode. Her daughter, knowing that my price was very reasonable for the tiara alone and much less than she expected for the sun, waved her down and did not attempt to haggle. I think that from then on she believed my story.

‘In cash, I suppose,’ she said.

‘I flatly refuse to carry that amount about with me,’ Dona Juana protested. ‘I will give him a cheque on my personal account with a Swiss bank.’

‘A banker’s cheque would be preferable, Doña Juana, though I am quite sure that your own would be honoured. But to whom would it be made out? Naturally I do not want to identify myself.’

I certainly did not. The further this conversation developed the more clearly I saw that I had not worked out the details. Honesty is said to be the best policy. Like hell it is! Dishonesty demands far more experience and technique. If it had not been for the admirable Lady McMurtrie, the Presidenta might have handed me over to the police in a rage.

‘And now, how and where am I to return your bag with all its contents and receive the money at the same time?’

‘Here in this room, of course.’

‘Good. Then I will arrive with a suitcase and the bag inside it. If anything is missing you can pick up the telephone and have me arrested. If you do not pay I shall walk out with my suitcase and inform the police where the sun is.’

‘I don’t give a damn if you do,’ she retorted. ‘I am entitled to wear it.’

Her daughter closed her eyes in resignation.

‘Then why, dear mamma, didn’t you declare its loss to the police and the newspaper man?’

‘Well, I had an emerald set in the centre. But that won’t harm it. It’s only glued.’

‘Nonsense! You were afraid of what Cayetano would say if he knew that you had taken it abroad and that you had allowed it to be stolen.’

Lady McMurtrie sat down for the first time, crossed her delightful spidery legs and took over the negotiations with the aplomb of a slightly crooked company director.

‘Now, mamma, when you draw out two hundred thousand, what are you going to say it was for?’

‘Good grief! He doesn’t care what I spend.’

‘No, so long as he knows what you spend it on. Well, I suppose we could say you lost it at one of the gambling clubs. But I think you must pay Harry cash. He will have trouble in opening a bank account with a false name and address.’

The telephone rang and Carlota answered it.

‘It’s Hector, mamma.’

‘Oh God, what does your husband want?’

‘He wants to know if the Punchao was in the bag that was stolen. You never said it was, so do you have it?’

‘Why should he think I have?’

‘Because he knows you, dear … No, she hasn’t got it, Hector. At least not yet. It was in the bag that was stolen and we are just negotiating with the thief … No, I don’t know what she is going to do with it … She is terrified that on his return from the northern frontier Cayetano will find out that she took it with her to London and she can’t see any way of putting it back in time. You had better come up to London … No, not Claridge’s. Keep away from us … All right, the Hyde Park.’

‘Where did the President keep it?’ I asked when she put down the telephone.

‘In his private office where he could discuss it with the goldsmiths. He lets me wear it on state occassions. Tell Harry what it all means, Carlota. Cayetano never talks politics with me and he does with you.’

‘I don’t know if you have any sympathy for dictators,’ Carlota said to me. ‘They have ideals of their own and they work very hard to realise them.’

‘I have had dealings with one, Lady McMurtrie, and as you see I escaped with my life.’

She remarked drily that I certainly wouldn’t in Malpelo, and gave me a thumbnail sketch of General Cayetano Heredia. I could see that she admired his ruthless energy. Her attitude had some resemblance to mine towards the Father of his Country.

‘The golden image of the sun,’ Carlota explained, ‘was the High God of the Inca Empire. It disappeared, melted down or dispatched to Spain, within a hundred years of the Conquest. This in your hands is a small replica of the original which came to rest in the Museum of Malpelo, though there is no record of how it travelled so far from Peru. It is known as the Punchao del Dia, the Moment of Daybreak.’

She went on to tell me that the sun was to be the symbol of Heredia’s government like Hitler’s swastika. It was to demonstrate that he represented the Indian and the Spaniard alike. A replica of it was to be everywhere – on the flag, over the gateway to the palace, behind his presidential seat in the assembly and at times on the bosom of his wife.

‘The Mother of the Country,’ I murmured.

She answered coldly, putting me in my place, that her mother could play that part to perfection, whenever she pleased. The Punchao had to be copied in a variety of sizes and frames. That was why he kept it readily available for conferences, designers and goldsmiths. The disks and the rays had to be standardised, which was infernally difficult.

‘I think I should have doubled my price,’ I said.

That was only a jest. Two hundred thousand pounds would be tricky enough to bank; to hold out for more was merely greedy.

But Doña Juana was near hysteria. She would lose all her influence over him. He would think up some vile indignity to punish her. She demanded that I should give her the sun then and there. She would pay me by a cheque on her Swiss bank for any amount.

‘And cancel it tomorrow?’

‘Oh, you beast! What shall I do, Carlota?’

‘Fly to Zurich and draw cash. We’ll be back here by dinner-time and leave not a trace behind us. And you – call with the sun and tiara about eight.’

I left Lady McMurtrie’s and went down to the vestibule where I could keep the main door under observation. They were only five minutes behind me and I watched them jump into a taxi and drive off. They had not asked at the desk for the flight times. Very sensible. Lady McMurtrie was not going to leave any clue to the flight. I gave them a few minutes to get clear and then took a taxi to Heathrow myself.

There was a flight to Zurich in half an hour. From a safe distance, I saw them book seats and vanish into the departure lounge. So far all was in order and I sat down in the bar to consider the next move. I had accepted Lady McMurtrie’s plan on the spur of the moment; on second thoughts, it appeared to me far too risky to hand over the jewels and receive the cash at Claridge’s. My first visit would pass, but now I could be sure that police or the hotel security service would be keeping a discreet eye on the Presidenta and her visitors; so the exchange had to take place in some neutral, undiscoverable room which meant that I must meet the pair as soon as they arrived back at Heathrow. That should be easy. They would take the flight which left Zurich at 6.30 p.m. No later plane would allow them to keep the appointment for eight at Claridge’s.

I returned to London by the underground, feeling that it would be as well to economise until I had my two hundred thousand. I took my imposing briefcase from the bank and walked with it to Gower Street, looking, I hoped, like a financial consultant on his way to a meeting with a bankrupt board. Safe in my room – the only place where I did feel safe – I settled down to doze over a book until it was time to start for Heathrow. In case of accidents I took the precaution of leaving my passport behind. I was not yet ready to disclose my true identity.

When they saw me waiting for them at the barrier, Carlota was at once suspicious. She looked anxiously round for the presence of police. She was afraid of course that I might be plotting to keep the Sun and the two hundred thousand as well. When I had got them into a quiet corner clear of the crowd I explained why I had changed the rendezvous.

‘Now we can’t make the exchange and check that it’s correct here or in the presence of a taxi-driver,’ I said. ‘I propose that we stop at any unpretentious hotel and that I take a room there. You will be just friends who will come up to say goodbye and then be off. I leave it to you to choose a taxi from the rank and choose the hotel. When you have left the hotel with the contents of this briefcase, don’t direct the taxi to Claridge’s. Get him to drop you somewhere, say, in Bond Street and walk from there.’

They approved, but Carlota said she didn’t know any hotel on the way to the centre of London. I replied that it didn’t matter where it was on the way so long as it was not an airport hotel. She then suggested a Richmond hotel where she and her husband had once stayed a night.

When we arrived, I booked a room for myself and said that the two ladies would be off in half an hour. Meanwhile could I have a bottle of champagne sent up to my room for a farewell drink. As they were both eminently rich and respectable there was no objection.

As soon as the waiter had come and gone I unlocked the briefcase and drew out from one compartment the Presidenta’s black crocodile bag and from the other her jewellery cases. She gave a yelp of delight as the Punchao flashed from its bed of velvet. The tiara in the case alongside looked almost vulgar, but I could imagine the former Juana Romero sweeping into a state banquet with her dark hair crowned by such a splendour of emeralds and diamonds. She was a stupid woman and it was then hard for me to understand the influence which she apparently had over her husband; it was that of a trained actress. She was a whole school of drama in herself. As a lean and ruthless military man, General Heredia must often have needed her advice on how to play warmth and generosity.

She handed over the cash with a regretful smile. There was so much of it that the leather of the briefcase bulged and the steel braces bent. I explained that one of the reasons why I had to keep it was to carry the cash; the other was that I had to possess some kind of overnight baggage. I added that they should carry the sun and tiara in their handbags or anywhere on their persons where they would be safer than in the black bag which could so easily be snatched or picked up by, well, somebody like me.

‘Are you content that you have it all?’

They were, and I drew the ear-ring from my pocket.

‘You forget this, Doña Juana,’ I said. ‘I am delighted to be able to return it.’

‘My daughter told me that you looked to her like a man of honour,’ she said. ‘She is seldom wrong.’

She held out a hand, palm downwards, to be kissed. Beautifully done. End of Act III. The house in tears.

I had to come downstairs to see them off although it meant leaving my stuffed briefcase all alone in the bedroom.

‘And you must come and see your new godson as soon as you return,’ Carlota said to me as the taxi drew up. A most intelligent remark. Obviously I was a godfather who had rushed over for the ceremony and stayed the night.

I returned to my room to find the briefcase as I had left it. It was a damned nuisance. I couldn’t deposit it in the hotel safe since it supposedly held my pyjamas and toilet articles. I couldn’t walk about with it indefinitely. I was a rich man stuck in the eye of a needle. I stuffed a few hundred into an inside pocket and went to bed looking forward to breakfast and an hour or two of peace.

In the morning I set out to leave the briefcase with the bank where I had first deposited it and then to return to Gower Street, the only home I had, to re-enter the world as a free man. As a vague precaution I decided not to take a taxi – a little too late, but one cannot think of everything – and walked to Richmond station. In Richmond Green a black car passed me and stopped close to the empty pavement some fifty yards ahead. A man got out as if to call at a house, leaving the car door open behind him. When I came abreast of him, he grabbed me with a speed which must have resulted from long training, hurled me into the car which was already moving and stuck a needle into my backside while I was still on hands and knees. I assumed he was after the briefcase and felt a fleeting sympathy for Dona Juana before I became unconscious.

When I woke up I found myself in a small whitewashed room lying on a trestle bed with a couple of blankets under me. The room seemed to be an attic for there was no window, only a skylight. The briefcase was on the floor beside me with the lock cut away. I stretched out a shaky hand to it, and fingers felt that my wad appeared to be intact. Then for what had I been hijacked, and how had I been traced in spite of all my precautions?

The door opened and a young man whose build and clean-cut profile suggested Spanish birth and breeding, asked me how I was feeling.

‘Fairly lousy, thank you,’ I replied.

‘I am sorry to have had to deal with you so drastically, but we had to be sure that you didn’t have a chance to yell for help. Now what is your name?’

‘Whatever I choose to tell you.’

‘A professional, ha?’ His English was excellent. ‘Then from whom did you get your orders?’

‘What orders?’

‘To get hold of the model Punchao del Dia.’

‘Nobody. It – well, came into my possession.’

I told him of my surprise when I found it in the black crocodile bag and that I did not know at the time who was its owner or what was its importance.

‘Where is it now?’

‘I do not know,’ I replied, for I was not going to give away the Presidenta.

‘I believe I should have knocked the first of your teeth out at that point,’ he said, ‘but as you will have seen I am not a Malpelo policeman. What do you know of my country?’

‘No more than what your president’s wife and daughter told me.’

‘And what was that?’

‘That the Moment of Daybreak – the Punchao del Dia as you call it – was of great value to General Heredia.’

‘I see. We were wondering why she did not mention the loss to the police. But why did she go to Zurich?’

My heroics in keeping silent over Doña Juana had evidently been quite pointless, so I gave him the truth.

‘Because I would not take a cheque.’

‘She couldn’t draw enough cash in London?’

‘Apparently not. May I ask how you know so much?’

‘You may. It will be a useful lesson for you in future, if you have one. Remember that the wife of General Heredia is a person of importance and cannot just jump on a plane like anyone else. There was a Special Branch man on duty at the VIP lounge. He recognised La Presidenta from the newspaper photograph and was curious why she should have gone to Zurich and back in a single day. It may be that he thought the robbery was faked and she was planning to get the insurance.’

He went on to tell me that when she and her daughter returned to Heathrow and were met by a man who looked like a high-class crook from the City, the Special Branch chap took the number of their taxi and when it parked again at the airport he asked the driver where he had dropped them. Enquiries at the hotel made it easy to identify the two ladies. The door had then been discreetly watched until I left that morning. They assumed the Punchao del Dia was in that briefcase of mine, but it was now obvious that it had been delivered against payment.

‘And who are “we”?’ I asked.

‘Do you speak Spanish?’

‘I do.’

‘Then you will find out from a rather more serious interrogator.’

He went out and before the door had closed behind him, I heard a silvery voice remark impatiently:

‘Well, what’s the bastard got to say?’

I was hurt by the contempt in that beautiful voice. It was a shock after the gentleness of my interrogation, apart from the casual reference to my doubtful future. What the devil had I walked into?

And how the devil was I going to walk out of it? My polite interrogator had locked the door and there was not a stick of furniture in the room beyond the light trestle bed on which I lay. It was obviously too short to reach the sloping window in the roof, but I decided to experiment. I tipped it up against the wall and scrambled up the frame. Standing on the head of it, which couldn’t be done for more than a few seconds because either it collapsed or I did, I found that my outstretched arm was still some eighteen inches short of the window and even if I could somehow bridge the gap I had only my fist to break the glass. Wrapping it in the sleeve of my coat wouldn’t help much. I should emerge on to a sloping roof as a highly suspicious character with one arm dripping blood. That was no way to appear in public.

Two more silent hours of morning passed and then a much smaller and less distinguished member of the unknown ‘we’ unlocked the door and relocked it. If they were both fair specimens of General Heredia’s opposition, it was drawn from both peasant and landowner. I would have liked to share a jug with this tough in Andean shade but he looked at me with such hatred that a jug was the last thing we were likely to share. He carried a long knife which could persuade me to co-operate more slowly than a revolver.

‘I have a few questions for you,’ he began in Spanish.

‘With much pleasure.’

‘Where is the Punchao?’

‘The wife of your president has it. You know that.’

‘You will get it back from her.’

‘My lad, one cannot enter Claridge’s like that and swipe jewellery.’

‘What is the number of her room?’

‘I don’t remember.’

‘Get up from that bed when you speak to me!’

So far he was merely softening me up ready for fiercer questions, holding that wicked knife an inch from my navel. I could have grabbed his wrist but it was a gamble who would win and I valued my navel though it had not been much use in later life. I knew his type when puzzled as well as angry; he had no clear picture of Claridge’s or me, and assumed I would be as terrified as any little urban sneak-thief helpless in the power of a bloodthirsty guerrillero. I considered the solid top of his round head. There might be a chance to use it if I inflated his manly pride still more.

I began to weep and pray, begging him for mercy; a wretched coward in full accordance with what he expected of an overdressed crook deservedly afraid for his life. With my arms around his knees – if knees can sneer – I gripped the ground with my toes and drove my bowed head forward and up with every muscle of my body behind it. When he doubled up in agony I wrenched his arm backwards and dislocated something – his shoulder probably. The knife, threatening his already battered testicles, persuaded him to lie on the bed.

I could now escape, for I took his key, but I had no idea how many passages and doors and people, with or without silvery voices, I should find on lower floors. It seemed wiser to carry out my first plan unless inspection showed that there was no practicable way off the roof. I cut strips of blanket with that admirably sharpened knife and tied his chest to the trestle bed so that his head and shoulders stuck out about eighteen inches beyond. A second strip fastened his ankles to the cross bar. A third closed my briefcase and tied it round my waist. Once he offered some resistance, but a further stretching of the dislocated arm convinced him that it was not worthwhile.

I tipped the trestle bed against the wall below the window, its legs folded and my interrogator firmly lashed to the frame. What he thought I was going to do to him I cannot say, carve my initials on his stomach perhaps. Any attempt to speak or yell was instantly suppressed by slight attention to the arm. His head and shoulders were well clear of the bed. The only question now was whether I had the strength to lift both bed and body together. I had – just – for the second it took to punch his head through the glass. I could then use him as a ladder. I regret the brutality, but it was an unavoidable component of the moral principles which I was compelled to accept.

Descent from the roof turned out to be easier than I had dared hope. The room where I had been confined was a sort of little penthouse. I had only to slide down a few feet of tiles to land on the flat roof of the main building. The door through which my two visitors had come, opened on to it so that all these manoeuvres had been unnecessary; once I had the key I could have walked out and a fire escape would have taken me down to the ground. I think that was probably the way I had been brought up from the car, so keeping my arrival – and of others in the past? – completely secret. That was also the reason for the folding bed which had puzzled me; it could be carried up without arousing curiosity.

Walking home, I wondered at the futility of my own character. Why was I so made that I had to foresee nonexistent dangers so far ahead? If I were a staff officer I should produce plans of incredible ingenuity to exploit a weakness of the enemy when he could be defeated by a plain frontal attack. Who was my enemy anyway? Presumably the Retadores, as the democrats in opposition to Heredia called themselves, though the methods employed seemed to be more typical of a Father of the Country. Whichever it was, how large was their cell in London and what were the police doing about it? At any rate it was certain that the police knew nothing about the Punchao or its importance or my identity.

I let myself into my room. It had been a long walk, carrying my coat which was streaked with blood and had to be abandoned. Fortunately, my old coat, the only giver of warmth in my days of misery, had come back from the cleaners. Blood on my face, if noticed, could be put down to a shaving cut. The briefcase could be washed. There would then be nothing to arouse the curiosity of public or police.

The kidnappers did not know my name or address; I knew their address but had no other clue to their identity. I wrote down a list of interested parties.

Juana: she was never going to admit that she had the Punchao, and was presumably in some danger from her husband and the opposition alike.

Carlota: torn between mother and father and would sacrifice me and the Punchao for peace in the family, if I were not – up to the present – her ally.

General Heredia: certainly ready to commit murder to secure the Punchao as the emblem of his state.

Los Retadores: the most probable kidnappers would have no mercy on opponents.

Sir Hector McMurtrie: definitely involved, but not a man to be engaged in illegalities in London. What is his interest?

McMurtrie struck me, on no evidence but the wrong half of a telephone conversation, as the sort of highly intelligent Scot who adopted, when he chose, the imperturbability of English convention. I decided to talk to him. We each had information which would be of interest to the other, and I was sure that for the sake of his wife and mother-in-law he would not inform the police.

I called him next day at the Hyde Park Hotel, saying that I had been present when he spoke to Lady McMurtrie the day before and would much appreciate a word with him. He did not hesitate and fixed an appointment for the evening. Evidently, Carlota had given Harry a good character or at any rate assured him that Harry had no more interest in blackmail.

I had expected Sir Hector to be something of the Latin American adventurer. I was quite wrong. He was fair-haired, bald on top and had the cheerful striding appearance of an active farmer combined with the unmistakeable self-confidence of a university don.

We settled down over drinks and I gave him shortly and shamelessly the story to date.

‘I cannot condemn you. My own morality is no better,’ he said. ‘I accept, through my wife, a considerable allowance from General Heredia which is most useful since I myself have no capital to support my hobby of archaeology beyond some worthless square miles of hill farming. So my conscience is raw, because I would rather see him before a firing-squad than cash his cheques. At the same time, I cannot help admiring my mother-in-law though she is composed of nothing but flutterings and vanity.’

‘May I ask how you met her daughter?’

‘Working in the Malpelo Museum. The General, I think, was impressed by the respectability of a British archaeologist and thought a baronet sat in the House of Lords and could influence the Foreign Office when there was a row with them.’

He went on to explain that I had certainly been kidnapped by a wholly inexperienced cell of Los Retadores messing about in London to keep an eye on United States propaganda which insisted that Heredia’s opponents were all communists. Felipe Montes, the first chap who interviewed me, was a left-wing idealist and a polo player. From my description, Sir Hector said, he seemed to have taken a commando course before joining the London cell. The thug, whose head I had used as a battering-ram, passed as a porter and was probably glad to have something to do. The silvery voice undoubtedly belonged to Teresa, a deadly little piece who fascinated our newspaper men but was more at home in the mountains with a Kalashnikov. She’d be ready to dynamite Claridge’s if it was the only way of keeping the Punchao out of Heredia’s hands.

‘But is it really so important?’ I asked. ‘After all, it’s only a scaled-down copy.’

‘Think of it as an ensign like the swastika or the Red Cross. It’s seventeenth-century work and the Spanish or Italian genius who made it had the original in front of him.’

‘You think it had not been melted down with the other golden treasures of the Incas?’

‘There are hordes of Indians and mestizos who believe that it was not. I was always amazed how groups around it in the museum were hypnotised by it. It was theirs, you see, their own art, the emblem of the godhead of the ancestors. If my father-in-law can identify it with his government, he’ll die in his bed.’

‘Is there any way we can get it back so that he doesn’t know that Doña Juana walked off with it?’

‘What’s this?’ he laughed. ‘You seem more interested in saving my mother-in-law from the consequences of her folly than in democracy for Malpelo. Well, I might be able to put it back in its museum case, but what’s the good? Juana must put it back exactly where she found it. And only she can describe where that was. Heredia does not know yet that it is missing. He’s reviewing troops in the north – so we have time.’

‘Were you a curator at the museum?’

‘Lord, no! I was studying the canals which once led the streams from the High Andes down to the coast.’

‘Then you are not directly interested in the Punchao?’

‘Let me put it frankly. Los Retadores would not hesitate to destroy that divine, mystical beauty for the sake of politics. I’m damned if I let them. But that means I am helping to keep Heredia in power. Why? Because some of the money he steals from the people goes to support my mother-in-law, my wife and myself. We are both thieves, my dear Mr What’s-your-Name.’

‘When is the next flight to Malpelo?’

‘Tomorrow night. She is quite safe till then. Claridge’s police and the Embassy have been warned of a possible plot to steal that tiara. I know the house where you were detained. The tenants are plain exiled citizens of Malpelo and nothing is known against them. But I will see they are watched. And somebody from the Embassy will be at Heathrow to see her and any parcels through Customs.’

‘And when she arrives will the Retadores know that she may be carrying the Punchao?’ I asked.

‘Yes, of course.’

‘What excuse can she give for leaving so soon after arrival?’

‘She heard of the cell of Retadores and was afraid of assassination.’

I asked him if there was in fact any such risk.

‘Very unlikely. Heredia’s vengeance would be appalling. There are better chances of grabbing the Punchao before it’s back in its place. Imagine the fuss on her arrival! Functionaries, footmen, and, in her private apartments, a troop of lady’s maids! She is going to find it hard to enter her husband’s office, and may offer a dozen chances for the Punchao to disappear in the crowd. That’s why I am travelling with her. Why don’t you come too as a friend and colleague of mine? I’ll pay your fare and when you come home I promise to find you a job and you can invest your two hundred thousand without a care in the world.’

Apparently, Juana had accepted Hector’s explanation that they needed a second guard and that I was the only desperado who knew the whole story and could be trusted to keep his mouth shut. It was a tempting offer. I replied that I might accept it if he would tell me what earthly use I would be to him in Malpelo.

‘Rather like the conjurer’s stooge. There is sure to be a moment when dear Juana plays the fool with the Punchao, and I may need help to make it disappear.’

‘I don’t want to be thrown in with the state jaguars.’

‘You’d have their whiskers off them before they noticed it. Give me your passport and I’ll have it visaed as my assistant.’

I was stupidly alarmed at giving away my identity. He appreciated my hesitation and pointed out that there could be no conceivable connection between his old archaeological pal and black crocodile bags. Only two of the London Retadores had seen my face long enough to recognise it. One of them was almost certainly in hospital, and the other, Felipe Montes, would be politely detained at the consulate at the time when passengers to Malpelo checked in.

So I handed over my passport. He read off my real name, Edmond Hawkins, and asked:

‘Any relation to the great admiral?’

‘Direct descent on the wrong side of the blanket.’

‘Splendid! It’s time there was another Hawkins to raise hell on the Spanish Main.’

Chapter Three

At the airport there had been no sign of my kidnappers and I settled down comfortably with absolute confidence that nobody had any interest in tracing the Edmond Hawkins, obscurely arrived from Africa, even as far as Gower Street, let alone Malpelo. I was sitting next to Hector McMurtrie with Doña Juana in front of us with a row to herself. She was carrying a large and luxurious box of chocolates which she placed on the rack immediately above her seat where we two could also keep an eye on it. Hector spent much of the flight briefing me – since I was to pass as an archaeologist – with some elementary facts about the politics of Central America and the cultural influence of the great civilisations of Mexico and Peru.

We arrived just in time. President Cayetano Heredia was expected to return to his capital next morning, having scattered the guerrilleros into the mountain forests, burned their villages and turned his troops loose on their women who struggled behind the rearguard, weighed down by pots, pans, bedding and babies. Well, my African had fathered his country by the same methods and the result was stark peace. For such peace, how high a price is justified?

Heredia was not modest when exhibiting his power. The airport was lit up. A squadron of cavalry was lined up below the steps of the aircraft to welcome and escort his wife. Hector assured me that he and I would be expected to join the party and we were ushered to a second car, behind Juana’s, surrounded by the glittering men and polished horses of the escort. I could understand that the city was so impressed by shows of such presidential magnificence that it forgot the anger and anarchy of the mountains.

I checked in at the chief hotel and then joined Juana and her son-in-law, who was naturally staying at the palace, for a triumphant glass of champagne in her private apartment. She cleared out her personal staff and when the three of us were alone said with her most winning and still girlish giggle:

‘Now it’s time for us to have a chocolate.’

‘You’d better visit his office alone,’ Hector advised. ‘I noticed that when we passed the President’s office there was an armed guard on the door and if he knows his job he won’t let Edmond Hawkins in.’

‘He will do what I tell him,’ Doña Juana said superbly. ‘But perhaps it would be easier for him if Mr Hawkins stops here in the room. We shall not, I hope, be more than a minute.’

She rose from her chair with what the Hollywood of her youth believed was majesty, flourished a key and with the chocolate box under her arm made for the door followed by Hector. Meanwhile, I amused myself by inspecting the portraits of three early twentieth-century presidents and one of Cayetano Heredia. I did not expect such a contrast. Heredia stood in field uniform against a background of happy peasants in a neat village. His face was a military mask revealing only the inevitability of such content and prosperity under his command. The other three were all sashed and frock-coated, one sitting at his desk, one presiding over an admiring congress, one merely standing gracefully at some kind of civic reception – all with the thin-lipped faces of grandees of Spain, unintelligent perhaps, but obedient to the rules of Religion and Law.

I turned round to face Juana, a suddenly pathetic sight like a partly inflated, wrinkled balloon, and a Hector with a set face no longer coloured by the wind and sun of the Scottish moors. So far as I remember his words, here they are:

‘Yes, that chocolate box had been carefully packed and the Punchao del Dia intact and beautiful. I could swear that the circle of little suns winked at us. It had been standing upright in a domed glass case – the sort of case they use to display some rare stuffed bird – and that was contained in a wooden cabinet pillared and hand-carved with the heads of little beasts.

‘Well, Juana unlocked the cabinet, lifted the glass case and put the Punchao back, expecting it to stand up,’ he went on. ‘But it would not; it fell flat. It had no base to stand on. She looked to me for help and the supposed masculine skill with metals and gravity. I couldn’t see how the hell it ever did stand up, and told her to try to remember exactly how it had been when she took it away. She hadn’t seen that there was any problem. Now that she thought about it, she believed it stood on two lower rays of the sun. That was impossible. The rays were not thick enough and their points were fine. I supposed that it had somehow been held upright by the glass case and I looked for a hole in the side or back of the Punchao where some tiny support could have been. No sign. Then a protrusion or a hole in the base where it had stood? I asked Juana if she was sure that it was upright and was answered by a mother-in-law’s standard look of contempt.

‘I ran my fingers over the base to feel for any sort of support which eyes had failed to see. Nothing. Then, as a wild theory, a magnet in the wooden cabinet? But a magnet wouldn’t work on gold. By God, I began to think that the Punchao still had some mystical power until I remembered that it was only a model of the original. Well, we closed the wooden cabinet, leaving the Punchao on the floor of the inner glass case, and locked the door of the office. I explained to the sentry that Juana’s wails were due to anxiety for her gallant husband.’

Well, if Hector couldn’t find the solution it was unlikely that I could; in their desperation, however, they looked for advice from Hawkins, the Government Analyst or Hawkins, the accomplished thief. I suggested that the only course was for Juana to admit that she had longed to take a close look at the Punchao – just curiosity which killed the cat – had taken it in her hands and couldn’t put it back as it was. Would darling Cayetano tell her how it stood upright? Innocent enough story which would also account for her fingerprints if he wanted them taken.

‘What about yours and Carlota’s?’ Hector said to me.

‘If you or Doña Juana have recovered enough to warn me when he is thinking of calling in an expert from the police, I shall be over the frontier and you won’t see me for dust.’

‘Which frontier? You’ll need a mule for most of them.’

‘Kindly leave me one tied up ready in the hotel patio.’

I said the usual exaggerated farewells to Juana and took the official car to my hotel, and much needed sleep.

In the morning I was awakened by the rumble of tanks and troop carriers down the main street and a scatter of cheers. The President had returned from his latest skirmish against democrats for the sake of democracy. I reckoned that I had better lie low and cultivate Hector’s discreet neutrality. At any rate, one mission had been accomplished. The Punchao was back in time with never a sign of its short visit to London.

Hector turned up in the blessed cool of the evening, while I was wondering if Heredia, like Marlborough, had jumped straight into the matrimonial bed without even taking his boots off. Far from it! Hector told me that his first visit had been to his office, from which he had emerged flaming furious. Juana stammered out her story, using every trick of her cinematic youth, finally falling on her knees in tears and begging his forgiveness. Such abject penitence was pretty rare, Hector gathered, and so all the more satisfactory. The President was completely mollified and took her into his office to show her how the damned thing worked.

A highly skilled watchmaker had been employed by Heredia to work on the Punchao without affecting the perfection of its ornament. The object was to enable the designers of the new state emblem to study the effect whether vertical or horizontal. To make it stand up you had to slide one of the little flashing suns; that controlled a tiny watch battery which dropped a length of fine wire to form a third leg to the two lower rays. If the Punchao was lifted the wire automatically returned to its coil. Anyone but the guilty Juana would have had the sense to wonder, when she removed it, how it had ever stood up.

But it would not stand up now. I must have damaged the very delicate machinery in my agitated passage from the public lavatory to another. So Heredia had ordered a car, a driver and a couple of armed guards and sent the Punchao round to the watchmaker for examination and repair.

Hector stayed on to have the hotel dinner with me, for Juana had arranged a tête-à-tête supper with the returning hero. We sat late, and during our third bottle I thought I heard the distant crackle of machine-gun-fire; so did other guests who buried their noses in their plates. Hector was not particularly curious, saying that he supposed it was the Retadores at it again, trying some futile stroke of terrorism to show the President that his recent consignment of American arms was not so effective in the city as it had been in the mountains.

In the morning, I looked out of my bedroom window and observed two police vans cruising slowly down the street. At intervals they would stop and interrogate individuals, especially if they showed any sign of wanting to escape. Some were thrown roughly into the vans; to judge by their clothing, they were all poor or down from the villages. I asked at the desk what the reason was for all this activity and was told that when one of the presidential cars had entered a narrow street in the old town the night before it had been blasted by a sudden burst of gun-fire. The driver and two guards had been killed outright while the workshop of a watchmaker had been sacked and the proprietor shot. The attackers had escaped on foot and were believed to have reached a car outside the city. Nobody knew why the watchmaker had been singled out. The neighbours and the local tavernas swore that, like most devoted craftsmen, he had no political opinions at all.

When I had finished breakfast I was approached by a sergeant of police who asked if I was Don Edmondo Hawkins, and politely invited me to accompany him. It was a grim spot to which he took me: an office in the headquarters of the civil police, whitewashed and sound-proofed. An imposing civilian sat at a desk with two chairs opposite. That upon which I was ordered to sit had a bloodstain on the back, perhaps deliberately left uncleaned.

‘You are a friend of the President’s son-in-law, are you not?’ he began. ‘Where did you first meet him?’

A nasty one, that! Hector must have been asked that question too and I could not know what he had replied.

‘At some conference at the British Museum, I believe it was,’ I answered cautiously.

‘La Presidenta states that after your arrival you paid a short visit to her at the palace.’

‘That is correct. We had been fellow travellers for so long, and it was at her invitation.’

‘She left you alone in her apartment for some time?’

‘Yes. She had some urgent business with her son-in-law. To telephone Doña Carlota perhaps.’

‘When she returned, did she appear agitated?’

‘Not agitated. One might say puzzled. But I left very soon afterwards.’

Damn the woman! What impulsive lie had she produced? I began to see why I was being questioned. But I could not have carried the news that the Punchao was to be returned to the watchmaker because she did not then know it herself.

‘After President Heredia returned from the punitive expedition did you see Sir Hector?’

‘Not till the evening.’

Hector would have confirmed that, but it was still just possible that I could be the informer.

‘What time did you arrive at the hotel?’

‘About seven, I think.’

The hotel, if asked, would confirm that, so it was no good to put the time of arrival later. The Retadores would have had three hours to organise and carry out the raid. But even if Hector had told me that the Punchao was at the watchmakers, how could I have let the Retadores know? I had had no visitors and had not got up from the table to telephone. The principal suspects were Juana or Hector himself and both were untouchable.

‘And what business has brought you to Malpelo?’

‘I am an archaeologist with an interest in the cultural affinities of the Indians of Central America and, as Don Hector McMurtrie was returning to Malpelo with the Presidenta, he asked me if I would like to accompany him. Of course I jumped at the chance.’

‘What do you know of the Punchao del Dia?’

‘I am most eager to see it and to judge for myself how closely the model corresponds to the description given by the Conquistadores.’

‘Why did Don Hector escort the Presidenta back to Malpelo?’

‘Because she was afraid of possible assassination.’

‘By whom?’

‘In London, he told me, there is an organised gang of exiles from Malpelo.’

‘Their names?’

‘He could give them to you if you don’t know them already.’

‘Thank you, Don Edmondo. I regret that I must detain you for further questioning, possibly by the President himself. You will be made as comfortable as possible.’

I asked of what crime I was suspected, and was told with a half-smile that I was suspected of communication with enemies of the state. Obviously, he thought, but dared not say, that the President had a bee in his bonnet.

He was right in that. Dictators, in my limited experience, depend on such bees for action when evidence is lacking. Heredia had a strong gut-feeling that his wife and son-in-law had a hand in some monkey business over the Punchao. Why had she visited it so soon after her arrival? Why had Hector accompanied her? What was the connection, if any, with that successful raid on the late watchmaker’s shop? Well, he couldn’t jail Hector without getting hell from Juana and cabled hell from Carlota, so I was a temporary substitute for the lot of them. I did not ask to see the British Consul since I should have had to give him more details of my dealings with Juana than I liked and invent unconvincing lies about my movements and means of support which could well lead him to cable London for confirmation. I had no intention of mentioning the large part of my two hundred thousand which remained at the bank.

The room to which I was escorted had at least a comfortable bed and chair, a wash basin and a water closet, all quite adequate for a country inn. I did not expect a visit from Juana or Hector until the clouds cleared away; they would be afraid of any confrontation when neither they nor I could know what story the other had confessed. Meanwhile, Juana cared only for herself and her husband, and Hector for both the safety of the Punchao and Carlota’s allowance from her father which allowed him to indulge his hobby as well as to improve his estate. I remembered how he had cursed the Ministry of Agriculture for not allowing him to terrace his hillsides in the common practice of the Iron Age.

I passed the day in reviving such memories. Conversation with the gaoler who brought me food and wine at the normal times was not encouraged. He was armed but not against any expected trouble from me. He gave me the impression of being anxious of some growing disturbance in the city since the arrests of the early morning. I slept peacefully until someone dropped, as I thought, some heavy piece of furniture not far away. This was followed by shots, running feet and a powerful explosion which left the door of my hospitable cell hanging from one hinge. I helped it the rest of the way and ran out into the central passage where I was grabbed from behind and hurried along past several corpses including that of my last interrogator.

We arrived in the courtyard, dismal in the first grey light of dawn, and I was hurled into a police van crammed with other prisoners who, for all I knew, might be bound for the firing-squad or the freedom of the mountains. When we had raced out through the shattered gates and round a corner where the hail of shots – most of them high – could no longer reach us, I disentangled myself from the crush on the floor of the van and had a look at my fellow prisoners. That was what they were: a pitiable lot, half-naked, beaten, with faces pulped and yelling with pain when they tried to move. There was no more doubt that I had been given a lift by a rescue party of Retadores. It occurred to me that when they discovered that I was a known friend of the Presidenta Juana I might not have long to live.

The growing light was now enough to reveal a troop carrier a mile behind us and closing. If we had chosen a main road we could have raced away but we were on a track winding between outcrops of rock into the forested hills. Soon, optimistic shots were kicking up the dust and we were told to tumble out and take cover. I grabbed a rifle belonging to the driver’s mate who had stopped one of those random shots and dived into a cleft overlooking the track but much too close to it, hoping that the pursuers would continue to grind their way uphill. In fact, I doubt if I had any coherent plan at all. I took to the nearest hole, obsessed by a terrifying vision of my lonely body running up the track, an unmissable target. The rest of the prisoners, who had the advantage of knowing where they were, had become invisible. They squatted in cover as naturally as partridges.

At the same time, the carrier was ditching its load of soldiers who took open order and continued the chase. I watched two of them blow out the brains of three poor devils who could not run. That was pitiless murder and I returned the compliment. Some Roman said that out of Africa always comes something new. It had. My General had insisted that all his civilian staff should know how to shoot. I took to the game and earned his personal commendation.

The officer in command of the party was safely behind his men; only he could have clearly seen where my shots had come from, so I had to teach him to lead his troops from the front in future – if he had any future.

There wasn’t an atom of soldierly courage in all this. I was angry, and certain that I was going to die. The safest place seemed to be the armoured troop carrier which was halted to my left and a little below me. I regretted that I had not the experience to drive a tracked vehicle, but there was a chance that the driver was still in his seat. If he was, I could get at him from behind by a possible wriggle through what might be called cover.

I reached the carrier, apparently unseen by its previous occupants who were up ahead busy searching every rock and patch of scrub, and climbed in. The driver was still there. He heard me and turned round to see my rifle trained on him. I ordered him to drive straight ahead. Neither of us had any temptation to be a hero, so he obeyed, pushing our empty van viciously out of the way.

I gratefully admired the American troop carrier. None of the shots which hit us penetrated the armour. But there was no enthusiasm for the chase in the Heredia troops; some of the shots presumably aimed at the carrier missed so widely that men on the far side of it, instead of searching the outcrops of rock, crouched behind them. Meanwhile, we reached the top of the ridge and were in dead ground; beyond was the edge of the forest and I could see three or four of my fellow prisoners dodging from tree to tree until they disappeared. The driver was disinclined to go further for shots were coming from ahead, and it was obvious that we now faced an advanced detachment of Retadores from which the raiders of the police station had started.

I ordered the driver to take off his uniform coat and his fairly white shirt which I raised, attached by the sleeves, to the barrel of my rifle. That puzzled the enemy; firing stopped and then began again. I waved my improvised white flag, and they let us alone while we rumbled down the track which continued clear of obstructions, into the trees. There we were savagely charged, but instead of a load of Heredistas they found only Edmond Hawkins shouting that he too had been a prisoner, terrified by what seemed a hedge of bayonets but turned out to be only four.

They thought at first that the driver had come over to them and slapped him on the back for his courage in joining the side of the people. He had the sense to keep silent and charged boldly along what once had been a forest path. After half a mile the tracks of the carrier became so entwined by lianas and saplings that it gave up.

Meanwhile, they tied my hands and threw me on the ground. After a discussion whether to shoot me or not, assuming that I was one of Heredia’s American advisers, they decided to take me back to their camp.

‘You’ll have to walk for the first time in your life, son of a whore,’ one of them said to me.

‘Well, I have legs.’

They were amused by my retort.

‘He has legs,’ they repeated jovially. ‘And he speaks Spanish.’

‘Is that such a marvel? It is the language of half the world.’

‘Who are you?’

‘An Englishman recently arrived in Malpelo, and they put me in prison.’

‘What for?’

‘Frankly, friend, I do not know. It seems to be the custom in this country for one half of the people to put the other half in prison and then that first half returns to let them out. So if you need some prisoners to take home as presents I will tell you how to get them. The Heredistas are wandering about the hillside searching for more of you to kill. But as they no longer have an officer, I’ll bet you they are tired of it and are sitting still and smoking. You will see them from the ridge, and if you then creep round the flanks, give a yell and charge, you will get them for nothing.’

‘And what about you, Englishman? I would let you go but you would run away.’

‘Where to, compañero? All I know is that this is a forest in Malpelo. Give me something to eat and drink and I will await your return.’

‘That I might do,’ he replied, ‘if I knew why Heredia had put you inside when you are not of our party.’

I had to invent some reason. I had begun to feel a liking for the Retadores; they reminded me of the humbler members of the Spanish hotel staff with whom I had sometimes shared a jug of wine after making my formal and usually unnecessary inspection of a kitchen. They relished any shaft of humour, especially if sardonic.

‘Look! You know that Doña Juana recently flew back from London. Well, I travelled alongside her, and halfway across the Atlantic she began to permit certain intimacies. I think that a steward must have noticed her enjoyment and reported it to the old sod in the palace and he made sure that I should not sit close to her again.’

‘The President’s wife! Well, she was once beautiful and, by God, there’s plenty of her left to play with. I wouldn’t mind sitting next to her myself. Look, mate,’ he went on, ‘we came out without any rations, but I carry about with me a little flask of good rum for emergencies only, you understand. Here it is and help yourself and be sure that we will carry you back to camp if those legs of yours won’t. Now we are off!’

I had guessed right. They were all Indians or had Indian blood, but as well as the language they had absorbed the spirit of Spain. His generous gift was most welcome, but sheer liquid fire for any poor gringo brought up on whisky. I took a couple of mouthfuls and settled down with my back against a tree trunk. I felt a new confidence in myself, having survived a Father of his Country and revolutionaries alike with all spare parts still intact.

They returned after a couple of hours, driving in front of them a party of my former pursuers with no trousers. I saw no brutality apart from laughter when any of the prisoners tripped into a cactus and had trouble regaining his feet because his hands were tied behind his back. A march of an hour took us to the headquarters of the brigade which was keeping a distant watch on the city. It was a village of temporary huts set in a dip of high plateau, containing wives and children who had been burnt out of their homes as well as the fighting men. The west side looked across impassable forest to a rugged coastline. On the land side, any force of Heredistas which broke out of the trees would be met by a curtain of fire from four or five strong points.

I was held apart from the rest of the prisoners and, lest that should show favouritism to a member of the classe culta, made to sit on the ground outside the commander’s tent while a smart orderly, probably a deserter from the regular army, went in to report what my captors had said about me. He then led me in before a major – to judge by his ragged insignia – of about my own age with a fair pointed beard who looked like one of the original Conquistadores. I had no hat to raise so I gave him a courtly bow.

‘First do me the favour to explain who you are and what an Englishman is doing in Malpelo.’

I replied that I was an archaeologist named Edmond Hawkins and a friend of the son-in-law of the President.

‘He was about to escort the Presidenta back from London to Malpelo and asked me if I would like to come with them. Naturally, I jumped at the chance. But on the second night after my arrival there was a raid on the shop of a watchmaker and afterwards I was put under arrest for no reason. My story of an indecency with Doña Juana was an invention to amuse your troops. I did not sit near her and, if you will excuse me, she is not to my taste.’

‘I have met this Hector McMurtrie. What is your opinion of him?’

‘His interests do not correspond to his sympathies.’

‘And yours?’

‘I cannot see that your Retadores are against democracy. You have, I believe, a number of so-called communists, but what of it? If they should seize power, they are not likely to storm the Panama Canal.’

‘You are right. The Indians have always been communists, but only now have they latched on to the name. Soak the rich. That’s their politics. In Europe you would call them left-wing socialists. Now, is it true that you took that troop carrier single-handed?’

‘Let your men take the credit for that, my commandant. I was the only prisoner who had a rifle.’

‘You have been a soldier?’

‘Never. But I was taught to shoot by an expert.’

‘Then you will have to learn the trade. You will understand that you have seen too much for me to let you go.’

‘Thank God for that, Major! I do not know how we got here or in which direction is the city, and it is very likely that I should end up in one of those valleys on the way to the sea.’

‘So would most of my men. Few of them can read a map and the contour lines are mostly wrong anyway. Well, I must do my round of the pickets, and when I return perhaps you will give us the pleasure of entertaining you in the mess.’

He fixed me up with a blanket and a pup tent where I soon fell asleep in spite of bruises. To put it mildly, it had been a hard day.

I was awakened by the same orderly who brought me a much needed bucket of water with which I cleaned off some of the blood of my fellow prisoners who had been packed with me into the rescuing van, and the clean but clinging dirt of vegetable and mineral. It was far from a regimental mess to which I had been invited. The major himself had evidently had no more than a bucket, and that was yesterday.

The major, three of his officers and a priest were round the table. They had excellent bread from the camp baker, plenty of eggs, corn and potatoes. No meat, since they would not deprive the Indian farmers, scattered in the ravines outside the perimeter, of the few beasts they had. I was in luck, they told me, a barrel of wine had arrived from Chilean sympathisers and been spirited from the docks to the mountains by the priest and a donkey. They could keep it for the mess without arousing any resentment since the guerrilleros preferred rum and water.

‘Has the major told you that we have something to celebrate tonight?’

‘I have too,’ I answered politely. I was longing to know whether the raid on the watchmaker had been successful.

‘May we tell him why?’

‘Why not? But Don Edmondo will not know what the Punchao is.’

‘I know what it was, and I have read somewhere that a model of it was made.’

‘Good! Well, Heredia stole that model from the museum and intends to use it as an emblem of the unity of his state. Now, we have, as you would expect, some loyal agents in the city and one of them informed us that Heredia had dispatched it to his clock repairer. Now, it is ours. Would you like to see it?’

The thought passed through my head that I wished to God I had never seen it. But was that true? I had to admit that I was enjoying myself.

The major picked up a parcel from his desk and undid the soft and careful wrapping. The exquisite little golden suns of the Punchao flashed back the light of the paraffin lamp. Here it seemed to be rejoicing in a more rightful setting than the bedroom of the Richmond hotel where I had last seen it.

‘Can you tell us who made the original?’

‘Nobody knows.’

That was true enough; but it was a subject I had to avoid. Apparently I could pass as an amateur guerrillero, but never as an archaeologist.

The priest made over it the sign of the Cross. Smiling, he noticed and remarked on my surprise. I replied that I was completely ignorant of church policy and assumed that they were for the government of Heredia.

‘Some perhaps. What we are for is that the peasant and worker should be contented and earn enough to feed and educate his children. Or do you think that I should not bless this symbol of the Rising of the Sun because the original was the supreme god of Indians who knew no better? To the Christian, it is a manifestation of the Holy Spirit like all the glories of the arts. We do not worship them; we thank God for them. It is Heredia who would treat the Punchao del Dia as an idol. But I preach a sermon, my sons, when I should be warning you that Heredia is planning revenge. Troops are pouring in from the coast and the country. It is up to your leaders to decide whether you fight or hide.’

That evening, inspired by the rare treat of wine and past victories, we rose to our feet and called for fighting. In the morning, a general council weighed the evidence. From agents in the plain came the news that what the padre had told us was no exaggeration. Later on a sweating messenger arrived – they dared not use radio – from Headquarters, authorising us to abandon the camp if we doubted whether we could withstand a siege. We were to remember that we were only a vanguard and a refuge for the destitute and that the Heredistas would split up into small parties to search for us and make us pay for our audacity by ambush after ambush.

It was more advice than an order but we took it. By evening, the posts were abandoned and stripped like the troop carrier. The weeping women and children were divided into small parties, each with its own handful of armed guides, and told where to go and what story to tell if any of them were rounded up.

The major asked me what I would choose, telling me that the choice was mine. I was at liberty to rejoin my distinguished friends if I wished.

‘I will come with you and the Punchao del Dia if you will have me,’ I answered. ‘I will make only one stipulation. If we run across my only friend in Malpelo, Hector McMurtrie, spare him and hand him over to me. But I think it very improbable that he will go adventuring beyond the city.’

Chapter Four

It was decided that our party should aim for the wild coast. Heredia would certainly not attack from that direction since half a dozen men armed with light machine-guns and posted at the mouth of a canyon or on the slopes above could compel him to search for any other approach, which would turn out to be as bad or worse. Our route was largely guesswork. We would hack our way through choked woodlands of pine or oak or climb low cliffs so steep that the mules once had to be hauled up, and then find that we were committed to head away from the coast and have to retrace our steps. By nightfall we had not gone far from the camp and could hear the distant rattle of firing – and saw from a hilltop a ripple of flame as they set the huts alight. A horrible business. Those few of our wounded whom our surgeon had pronounced to be past saving had been left behind and we had no doubt that their bodies were helping to fan the flames.

At first light we were off again, and at last we could see where we were forced to go whether we liked it or not: a cove marked on the map, between two promontories with a sandy beach. We hailed it with joy – soft sand for aching feet, calm sea for weary bodies. Our commander, however, was uneasy, for there was no way out of the cove except by the little stream we had followed down. The track that we had left behind up crags and through forest would take time to trace but could not be mistaken. If we were caught in the cove and the promontories occupied, that was the end.

A fishing-boat passed close in and appeared to drop something overboard. As the wash eddied away, we could see it was a human being swimming ashore with a leisurely overarm stroke and pushing a fish crate ahead. One of our party swam out to help and the two landed together. To our amazement, it was a young woman in a swimsuit propelling a minimum of clothes in the crate. We gathered round her eagerly, assuming that she carried orders from Headquarters though how the devil they could have known where to find us was a mystery. The major began to question her, suspecting that her arrival could be some ingenious trick of the Heredistas. She explained that security was so tight that she could find no way of secretly entering the country and so had hired the fishing-boat to drop her at the cove. She knew the position of the camp we had just left and boldly reckoned that she could get there on foot. She introduced herself as Teresa Molina Cisneros.

The daughter of General Molina,’ the major exclaimed, adding that he had heard that after the execution of her father she had taken refuge in London.

‘Yes. I was there only a week ago. I wanted to do more for my country than the foolishness of newspaper articles. That would not avenge my father and give us freedom. Evidently I have had the luck to fall in with a patrol of Retadores. I have news for you to pass on to Headquarters.’

It seemed to me that the voice was familiar but I had been thrown among too many strangers to place it. Its decisiveness was not unlike Carlota’s.

‘You know Heredia’s plan for the Punchao del Dia?’ the major asked.

‘To make it an emblem of his state, yes. A new swastika for the damned. The Presidenta took it with her to London and lost it. It was sold back to her and she returned with it to the palace.’

‘A moment, señorita!’ said the major.

He placed his valise on a flat rock, opened it and unwrapping the Punchao held it above his head as the first segment of the sun rose from the sea. The assembled guerrilleros gave a collective gasp of wonder instead of a cheer. They had all heard of it, but only a few had seen it on a visit to the museum. There, between the dark cliffs of the promontories, it flashed like a tiny morning star, ready to be worshipped by the golden men who shared its colour.

Heredia was no fool. I was prepared to accept the divine aura of the original which had so impressed the Conquistadores, but I doubted whether any sculptor or goldsmith could possibly have reproduced the subtleties which had once contributed to its perfection, and whether a mere model could be as essential to Heredia’s state emblem as he believed and the Retadores feared. Yet here on the crescent-shaped beach there could be no doubt of the Punchao’s power to impress. As an emblem, it would supply Heredia’s government with an aura of legitimacy which packets of votes manipulated at the polling booths could not.

Teresa offered a personal gesture of reverence to this miniature of ancient glory, holding out her hand as if welcoming a guest from her childhood. At the same time, her eyes fell on me and her tone of voice changed to one I had already heard and now recognised.

‘So that bastard had it all along!’ she cried. ‘What is he doing here?’

She seemed to have only one name for me.

‘May I remind you, Doña Teresa, that if I had it all along I must have at least decided to keep it out of President Heredia’s hands?’

‘You sold it back to the Presidenta!’

‘I did. I admit it. Together with some other jewellery.’

The sentry on the high ground above the stream sent back a runner with the message that some of the Heredistas were in sight. We formed posts to cover the entrance to the beach and the deadly exposed climb to the protective promontories from which we could only be dislodged at the cost of murderous casualties among the attacking Heredistas.

Their first wave came on carelessly. The survivors could only crawl away.

The second wave charged us at the double. Those who were still on their feet huddled together in patches of dead ground and refused to come nearer. Here and there a man rose to his knees to shout defiance – a habit which seemed to go with Indian blood – and at least died gallantly. We ourselves suffered few casualties. It was the hell of a place, that narrow valley, for my first experience of war.

The firing died down and the best the enemy could do was to call on us to surrender. It seemed to me that we were hopelessly outnumbered and that in the end we could do nothing else. My little beauty had picked up the Kalashnikov of one of the very few of us who had met cold steel and was savagely blazing away from thick cover. When I suggested that she was wasting ammunition, she nearly added ‘the bastard’ to her bag of mosquitos.

At last there was silence except for occasional pot shots. I, utterly inexperienced in war, was inclined to believe that there was no longer any reason why I should not change position and stretch my legs. I was saved from that suicide by an almighty bang from the left front. The leg of my sympathetic major, trailing a strip of the priest’s black cassock, skidded in from the sky. They had brought up a mountain gun which steadily and inhumanely wiped out our posts. Our men charged it but met the same fate as the Heredistas.

From our position there was a possible route into a little waterfall. It gave no real cover but if we squatted down and leaned back against the rock there was a chance that we should not be seen while the enemy was engaged in despatching the wounded. The Punchao appeared to have rescued itself, for the major had returned it to his valise which remained a little below his post. I could see the top of it above the grass whereas to the enemy it must have appeared as just another piece of baggage abandoned by the Retadores. I told Teresa that if the enemy would do us the favour of remaining more or less where they were I would try to reclaim it and drag it with us under the fall.

‘But we shall never see it again,’ she whispered.

‘Why not? At least we shall know where to look for it. Heredia will not.’

‘You think we can get away?’

‘After nightfall and by swimming, we have a chance.’

Rather to my surprise, she agreed. It was not, I think, the danger of death which influenced her but the prospect of falling wounded into enemy hands. The civil war had no mercy on women captured in arms before they were killed or abandoned.

I found no difficulty in crawling up to the valise but as soon as I tried to slide it down to the water the movement in the grass was spotted and drew a shot. Teresa immediately gave me covering fire – which was decidedly more dangerous – and I was able to reach the veil of falling water with the Punchao and myself intact.

Teresa joined me after I had buried the valise under a slope of gravel and we sat side by side in the shade of the rockface with the water over our knees. It warmed up a little at midday but we still shivered. The Heredistas splashed downstream within feet of us but without looking closely at the fall.

We waited till dark when all was quiet. It seemed that the enemy, after searching the sandy bay and killing the badly wounded, had retired, withdrawn their gun and camped somewhere on the reverse slope.

I tied my shoes round my waist and followed Teresa into the water, swimming out to the north headland in the hope of getting round it to a possible landing place. So far as we could see there was none, and after resting on an isolated rock we struck out again along the coast to the north-west. Nowhere was there a landing place, but fortunately no sea was running. At last we came to another seepage of water from above and followed it up the cliff over giant pebbles, mostly on hands and knees, to a rough path where we collapsed and waited for the dawn. When the sun at last poured down on us, Teresa spread out her swimsuit to dry and when I hesitated to discard shirt and trousers – males being rather more modest than females – told me sternly not to be a fool. We slept for five or six hours by which time all clothing was dry and we could face an empty and unknown world without immodesty. I was careful to avoid any comment on her extraordinary beauty.

Empty and unknown I wrote, and so it seemed to us; but in fact it was merely the end of modern civilisation. Inland was something of a village with the outlying houses of small peasant proprietors. We watched the early morning movements out to the fields, wondering how on earth we were going to explain a young woman appearing from nowhere without any possessions but a swimsuit. I myself could pass as a peasant proprietor.

‘I think we shall have to use your experience as a thief,’ she said.

‘On whom, Doña Teresa?’

‘The woman from the cottage down there has just gone to work.’

Burglary she was recommending. Well, at least I could pay for whatever I took. My captors had been ordered by the major to return my money. The notes had stuck together but were now dry.

I went down to the cottage, skulking from bush to bush like a fox. The door was open, for the normal inhabitants of Malpelo were as honest in peace as they were predatory in war. I hunted through the few clothes and decided on a flounced confection of white lace in payment for which I left – at a guess – about ten times what it had cost and sneaked with my loot back to the hillside where I was received with laughter, the first I had heard from Teresa. She told me I had pinched the lady’s wedding dress, carefully preserved, and asked me how much money I had left in payment.

‘Ah, well,’ she said when I told her. ‘She’ll cry tonight and tomorrow but she’ll probably keep quiet about her loss unless she is broke – which they usually are, the poor dears – in which case she will put down the loss to the intervention of the Mother of God.’

She slipped the frock on over her swimsuit. It was, of course, far too large but she created a tolerable fit by rolling up the bra to form a belt. ‘And now how do we reach Puerto Santa Maria?’ she asked.

‘Have you friends there?’

‘Of course. The police so far have nothing against me.’

‘Well, there must be a road from here to Santa Maria.’

‘What shall we say?’

‘We are going to be married in the Cathedral. You are already dressed for it. My clothes are in Santa Maria.’

We spent another night fighting mosquitos – thank God it was the last – walking till we were clear of the village and in open fields. Soon after sunrise a car bumped along the road, putting on speed when it saw us. I waved a handful of peso notes at him which persuaded the driver to stop. Yes, we had trusted to a friend to drive us to Santa Maria but he had never turned up. The driver told us to jump in and wouldn’t take our money. I was now growing accustomed to arrest and hourly expected it, but nobody interfered with us. Teresa was dropped at the house of a relative where she was received with tears of surprise and joy. The car then went on to my hotel where I was greeted as one returned from the dead and had food and drink pressed upon me. All my possessions were still in my room. Among strangers of Spanish birth and culture one becomes a friend in a surprisingly short time.

As soon as my arrival was known, I was summoned to the palace. Heredia was most courteous and thanked me for my attention to his wife. Naturally she had not said a word of the theft of the Punchao in London. As for me, I had been carried off by the raid of the Retadores and escaped. Heredia knew very well that I was omitting inconvenient parts of the truth but left it at that. Teresa was not mentioned by either of us.

‘Have you heard of the Punchao del Dia?’ Heredia asked.

‘Of course. But I know no more of it than your son-in-law has told me.’

‘At what point did you escape from the Retadores?’

‘I don’t know. But I could possibly show you on the map.’

He pulled out a large-scale map of Malpelo.

‘There you are.’

‘I don’t know the country, so it is hard to tell, Your Excellency. I hid in the sea during a battle and when all was quiet again I swam along the coast until I hit a possible landing place. There I dried myself when the sun rose and hit a road – this one, I think – and was picked up by a passing car.’

He let it go at that, for which I was thankful. The chap I wanted to see before I talked any more was Sir Hector.

Hector turned up in the evening at my hotel and I ordered drinks for us in the privacy of my room, where I gave him the full story.

‘So if the Retadores can ever find the Punchao they can stick to it,’ he said. ‘There is no evidence against you or that young wild cat. What did you think of her?’

‘With profound respect – which, I’m afraid, is not returned.’

‘God, what guts! What is her story going to be?’

‘Simply that she came home because she refused to do nothing in London.’

‘Well, she may get away with house arrest only – on condition that Heredia never finds out that she knows where the Punchao is.’

‘And if he does find out?’

‘How much agony can she endure without confessing?’

I was appalled at the thought of that exquisite body being torn apart.

‘Look here! I’m going to join the Retadores.’

‘Don’t be a damned fool, Edmond! Work with me as my assistant and wait for your chance. The Punchao will help. It won’t like getting wet.’

News in a small and anxious Latin capital travels as swiftly by word of mouth as in print. Next morning it was generally known that Teresa Molino Cisneros was in town having swum ashore from a Costa Rican fishing-boat and taken refuge with her cousins. The car which carried us both to Santa Maria was soon traced and the driver, when interrogated, could only say that Teresa and I had been picked up together on the road. The police, of course, wanted my opinion on that. I said that we had met on the road, both looking for transport to Puerto Santa Maria and both thankful when the driver – very much a gentleman I added – had consented to take us. Yes, I had noticed that my fellow passenger was rather splendidly dressed, but had assumed that it was the custom when visiting the capital. After that bit of wide-eyed innocence the policeman closed his notebook.

Sir Hector immediately put me to work, studying the line of an imaginary canal which had once led the tropical rains down to the Pacific. He thought it unlikely that there would be any questions from amateur or professional archaeologists, but provided me with convincing answers if there were. He gave me a foreman, three labourers, a cook and a tent and there I remained for a futile but enjoyable week.

Once I rode down the hill to dine with Hector. Meanwhile the two shafts which we had dug to reach bedrock were visited during the night, presumably by the secret police. Hector had underrated the President’s interest. His Excellency was not in search of the Punchao, which he believed was now in the possession of the Retadores, but of the motives of his son-in-law and the unlikely appearance of Teresa Molino from the sea.

Teresa knew where I was to be found through my cook. How Heredia managed to govern Malpelo at all when at least one in five of the inhabitants was an agent of the Retadores was a mystery – or would have been unless the loyalty of his army was secured by loot, rape and an unfailing trickle of American arms. Our dig was only a valley away from the hacienda of Teresa’s cousins where she had taken refuge. Whether Hector had chosen it from half a dozen other possible sites I do not know, but his probable reason was that she knew the exact hiding-place of the Punchao whereas I, having no map of the country in my head, was vague and would have to ask questions. He also, I fear, did not give a damn what happened to her.

It was after supper and the men, after asking my permission and wishing me goodnight, had walked off to the taverna at the head of the valley when I heard the gentle beat of a horse’s hooves coming up from the sea. I slid off my chair into the long grass and waited. The lamp showed I was at home but not where I was; a reasonable precaution. When the unknown rider dismounted, I showed myself and asked what brought her.

‘To see if you are on anybody’s side beyond your own,’ she replied.

‘I am too ignorant of what the sides stand for, señorita,’ I replied. ‘When I think of Heredia’s methods of government, I am all for a revolution, but from what I have seen of your Retadores I doubt whether they are likely to be much better when in power.’

‘What would you do with the Punchao?’

‘After a reasonable interlude I would put it back in the museum with an armed guard.’

‘It must be destroyed.’

‘Don’t tell it so.’

‘You are absurd.’

‘Not absurd. Merely respectful. It hasn’t finished with me yet.’

‘Then the sooner you get out of Malpelo the better.’

‘I entirely agree, but I think I shall be lucky if I am allowed to get out before His Excellency has got the full story from a prisoner – if, that is, the dozens of prisoners can still talk. By the way, who knows that you have visited me?’

‘Nobody that I cannot trust.’

‘Then you are very lucky. I cannot trust anyone. There is Hector who is defending his mother-in-law. There is you who would cheerfully see me drawn and quartered if it would help to keep the Punchao out of Heredia’s hands. There is the British Consul-General who would gladly ship me home to be gaoled by British police. And, now I come to think of it, there is that unfortunate lass whose wedding dress I stole.’

‘You paid for it.’

‘That was a miracle and doesn’t count.’

‘And if I asked you to go with me and recover the Punchao?’

‘I fear, señorita Teresa, that I could not refuse your request.’

I don’t think she had expected that reply.

‘Can you knock off work here any time?’ she asked.

‘Yes – if Hector can find an excuse.’

‘Very well. Then make your way to the little bit of a seepage where we landed and wait for me.’

‘Are you likely to be long?’

‘Get Hector to provide you with a car. I shall start tomorrow by horse. It will take me about two days to reach the village of Nueva Beria as it is called. I am going to return the wedding dress secretly, and then I shall find you.’

‘Good God, why take the risk?’

‘So long as no one sees me, it will all be a part of the miracle.’

‘And then?’

‘You and I recover the Punchao and take it to the headquarters of the Retadores. That is where I was going when I swam ashore.’

‘You haven’t a chance against Heredia’s secret police.’

‘I do, so long as Heredia’s thugs do not see me leave my cousin’s house and believe I am still there. I shall be dressed as a boy.’

‘Papers?’

‘All in order. I am not an archaeologist, but is there any reason why the channel of the little seepage where we went ashore should not have been artificial?’

‘None except that it wasn’t.’

‘Never mind that. You are looking for the chisel marks of the Maya. Keep looking until I turn up. Agreed?’

Well, it was not going to be as easy as she thought. Hector could provide a car and some reasonably impressive story, but as a foreigner I should attract the attention of the mayor – if the village was big enough to have one – and of the district police. The only safe solution was to lay in supplies and remain in hiding. We could presumably find an overland route to the site of the battle and the waterfall without swimming.

‘Suppose I arrive long after you?’ I asked. ‘Where are you going to be?’

‘I haven’t the least idea. Somewhere not far from the point where we took the car. We came to the road through pretty thick cover, you remember.’

She rode away into the darkness, leaving me full of doubt. My dominating fear was that the battlefield would not yet be clear of saleable loot, and yet we were proposing to enter it without being seen by scavengers or women searching for their dead.

Next day I rode down into Puerto Santa Maria, ostensibly to consult Hector about wholly imaginary chisel marks but really to put him in the picture. He thought that our private expedition would end in murder and rape and that as the weather was due to break we could never repeat our swim round the point with or without the added weight of the Punchao.

‘And if you recover it, where are you going to deliver it?’

‘The headquarters of the Retadores.’

‘Which is never the same from one week to the next. What would your Teresa think if you delivered it to me?’

‘I don’t know. Probably that you would hand it to Heredia or Juana and then we should be back at the beginning with a change of watchmaker, a bigger guard and quite enormously bigger lies from Juana.’

‘Can’t Teresa do this job alone?’

‘To be drowned or captured and shot?’

‘Ah, well, if you feel so strongly about it. And what do you propose to do if both of you get away with it?’

‘Return quietly to your dig if you leave the tent in place and say that your report of carved stones was just local nonsense.’

‘Where did we get it from?’

‘I leave that to you.’

Next day, Hector paid off the workmen and borrowed a car from the palace. Its number plate protected me from all police inspection. The driver dropped me in the dusk beyond the scattered houses of Nueva Beria. The calling of a wild cat reminded me that I was utterly alone. There was no other sound but the occasional, distant grumble of the sea as the wind, still uncertain, turned to the west. It occurred to me for the first time – there had been so much else to think about – that Teresa and I had scrambled ashore at the bottom of the tide.

I installed myself fairly comfortably in a hollow which allowed a glimpse of the end of the road and the roof of the cottage from which divinity had removed a wedding dress and was about to return it, or perhaps had already done so. The first light of dawn revealed nothing but a tumble of stone where the road ended. There was no telling what divine compassion had been up to, and nothing I could do except wait for the appearance of a boy.

All day there was no sign of Teresa or of any of the inhabitants of Nueva Beria. Evidently the end of the road was the end of civilisation. There must be a way to the beach of the battle but clearly it swung round behind one of the two promontories and joined the path by which our force had arrived. The mountain gun which had shelled and utterly defeated us must have come up this way. Either the path was almost invisible or we had been so anxious to reach fresh water that our late commander had decided to rest the column. I decided to search for this path, for it offered an escape route if ever Teresa and I met each other and recovered the Punchao. Provided this lonely and uncultivated spot was as empty as it seemed we could be away before dawn. Extreme care was all that was needed: to see before we were seen.

While the light lasted, I crawled cautiously up the slope of the southern hill from which I could look down on the battlefield. The Heredistas had lightly buried their dead and had thrown ours into the sea assuming that the tide would carry them away. It had, and then successive high tides had brought them back again. Nobody had bothered to bury them, for none of them belonged to Nueva Beria and the priests of the province were too busy with half-hearted denunciations of violence.

The wind began to moan down the little valley carrying the stench of the dead whom the tides had not reached. In the dusk, a woman was turning over the corpses to look at their faces. She had a puzzled child following her about. How had they got there? Following far behind our retreat, perhaps, refusing to be evacuated with the mob. At last she lay down and the boy said something which brought the tears again. I felt my own cheeks wet in sympathy. The solitary, searching woman would have torn the heart out of civil war.

The boy, I think, saw me but made no sign of it. Life and death to him were now intermingled. Was it a brother or his father for whom the woman was searching? The pair paid no attention to me as I slid down from another world. The waterfall splashed down in front of me and I passed through it. Digging with my hands I soon found the Punchao. Reflecting the faint light of the moon, its little stars also seemed to be weeping.

I climbed up the slope which we had all dashed down to drink and to cool our feet. A rougher track went straight on. Evidently it had been the route from another village to the sea before the road to Nueva Beria was built.

I went some way down it, following the tracks of the mountain gun which had been hauled back to the temporary camp of the Heredista main body. There was no point in going too far from the rendezvous agreed with Teresa, so I turned back, passing the head of the Valley of Death, and took position in thick cover not far from the point where we had waylaid the car. There I slept a little till sunrise woke me and then set out for a patch of tall grass from which I could see without being seen. Teresa came from the direction of Nueva Beria where she had spent a couple of nights in a tumble-down stable with her horse. When I showed myself, the first thing she said was that the Punchao had gone from the waterfall.

‘I know. I have it.’

I undid my shirt and showed it hanging on my chest in the place where Juana had intended it to be when she dined at Buckingham Palace – a most improbable destination considering that she would have been without a husband and Her Majesty would have had to pass a note to a secretary to find out where in the hell Malpelo was. In some ways Juana was still the movie actress, magnificent no doubt as a gracious hostess but as a guest in a foreign land too anxious to impress.

‘My horse is in Nueva Beria,’ she said. ‘Give me the Punchao and I shall be off at once.’

‘You knew where the headquarters of the Retadores was. But is it still there?’

‘I shall be told where it has gone. There must be someone left behind at their former camp who can tell me.’ ‘How will you identify yourself?’

‘I shall be recognised.’

‘Provided there is someone at the new camp who escaped from the massacre at the old.’

‘Of course there will be.’

‘What would he be paid if he buried you unobtrusively and took the Punchao straight to Heredia?’

‘None of us would be so foul.’

‘All angels, are you?’

‘You must not give it to Sir Hector.’

‘I have not decided.’

‘You shall not sell it back to Juana. Hand it over!’

She was so angry with me that she pulled a little .22 automatic out of the unfamiliar trouser pocket. I caught her wrist just in time before she could raise it and the bullet hit the ground between us.

‘Just what I needed,’ I said. ‘But do remember not to pull it out of your trouser pocket with the safety catch off. Now go back to your horse and your family and leave the rest to me. Whatever I do will be wrong but well-meaning.’

She burst into tears of frustration as I handed the pistol back to her. Her last words to me before striding away to recover her horse were:

‘Go to hell!’

I was getting weary of the Punchao. It was also extremely uncomfortable. I can only assume that women seldom wear anything of that weight. The more I thought about it, the less I knew what to do with it. I wanted to hand it over to the Retadores, but the chance of me reaching their headquarters was slim. I had first to find them and then produce the Punchao before I was stripped and shot. Hector was the only hope and I was by no means certain that I could trust him not to return it secretly to his mother-in-law. Of course I could always bury it again but the Retadores would be informed through my cook or Teresa that it was, or had been, in my possession.

By this time, I knew the road back to Puerto Santa Maria and decided to walk for three nights to avoid being stopped and questioned. On arrival it might be possible to discover a fishing-boat or light aircraft and get out of the country much as Teresa had got in. It was an appalling thought that on my chest I carried the hopes of permanent revolution together with Heredia’s emblem to prevent it.

Chapter Five

I had no trouble on the way and found my tent and the cook-house still in place. I thought it very likely that Teresa or my former cook would pay me a cautious visit while I was asleep – and I was certainly going to sleep for ten good hours – so I took the precaution of lifting the Punchao off my neck, wrapping it in the sweat-soaked shirt I had worn for four days, and hiding it in the thick, fleshy leaves woven round an old bird’s nest instead of burying it in the ground which they would carefully explore. The only way of reaching the nest was by climbing a weaker, smaller tree with crowded branches and by swinging like an incompetent ape to an overhanging branch of the vulture’s tree.

Nobody woke me or left any tracks. I am ashamed to say that in the clear light of morning I hoped that the Punchao would have disappeared. It hadn’t.

I walked down to the nearest village and called Hector to demand a meeting. He said that we should not hurry it. His wife, the formidable Carlota, had arrived on a visit to her father. Quite what she wanted he did not know, but it would be wise if he and I first met at, say, the museum. That would give us an excellent excuse for a private talk.

I was received by the permanent staff of the museum with profound respect. They felt a bit lonely and leaderless, for the curator had gone off to join the Retadores, a typical gesture of intellectuals. Yes, Don Hector was expecting me. There was a knife of unknown metal that he wished to discuss, which he believed had been found near Nueva Beria. I am inclined to think that archaeologists always have a high-sounding excuse ready for any activity.

I was escorted up to the curator’s office where Hector sat professionally with a scrap of flint on the end of a microscope.

‘Ah, Hawkins, just the chap I wanted,’ he said. ‘What do you think of this?’

‘What am I supposed to think of it?’

‘You found it in the rubble at the end of the road two metres below the original level and it is obviously worked.’

‘Well, I’m not sure what date that would make it, but they hadn’t got matches. I understand that Doña Carlota has arrived. How much does she know?’

‘Nothing but a four-line report of the battle in The Times. Nothing at all about the Punchao which was the chief reason for it. Nobody except that wretched girl knows yet that you recaptured it and there is no reason why she should be mentioned at all.’

‘Which side will your wife be on when she has the whole story?’

‘Her father’s, of course. She doesn’t approve of his methods but she would never agree to his being deprived of the Punchao.’

Before I had an opportunity to tell him of my adventures and that I had the Punchao, we heard the solemn footsteps of, apparently, all three of the assistant curators escorting Doña Carlota down the passage. The door was thrown open. She was evidently surprised to find me in her husband’s office.

‘Ah … Mr … er …’ she began. ‘Excuse me, but what is your name now?’

‘Edmond Hawkins, as it has always been, Doña Carlota.’

‘My husband tells me that you are now the only person who knows where the Punchao is.’

‘I wish I did, Lady McMurtrie. The Retadores captured it in their raid in the capital and displayed it when they were attacked. But after the battle the survivors apparently took it away with them.’

‘Why the hell does it matter so much to them?’ Carlota asked impatiently. ‘Anyway, it’s a horrid little country.’

I couldn’t entirely agree with her, remembering the courtesy with which all the people of Malpelo had treated me, except of course that porter of the London Retadores who was probably still in hospital. I wondered what account he had given of the broken window.

‘And a horrid little democracy, you would say?’

‘Look here, Mr Hawkins! I have a feeling that you and my husband know more than you are saying. Is there any reason why you cannot give the Punchao back to my father secretly? He would be immensely grateful and Hector and you would be the cat’s whiskers. Have you thought of that? What about a ranch on the Pacific as a reward?’

‘What about Juana?’

‘She will keep her mouth shut. You recovered the Punchao single-handed or with Hector, if you like. There is no reason why you need mention that the Punchao was ever in England. You and I have never met before.’

Well, that would take care of my future, but I did not jump at the solution. Nobody, not even Hector, knew that at that moment the Punchao was up a tree near the camp, and my instinct was that it should stay there until the position was clearer. I would not send a message to the Retadores that I had it and was eager to deliver it. I had to know more of the absolute integrity of my messenger and I was not prepared to let Heredia know that I had it. Hector? Well, if Carlota had not appeared when she did I should have told Hector all the truth and asked his advice. Anyway, I knew what it would be: to keep Heredia in power and to clip his wings if at all possible – a position by no means unknown to normal politicians in democratic parliaments everywhere.

Well, I was indecisive. I had continually in mind that poor woman searching among the dead for her vanished love, and then I would remember my pet dictator, the Father of his Country, who had at least given peace at the price of corruption. My duty – if I had one – was to bring Heredia down and restore the Punchao to its proper place as nothing more than a fascinating museum exhibit. At least I should have cleared my conscience of the first and only theft of my life.

For the time being, we left the fate of the Punchao out of our conversation. Carlota would have made an admirable diplomat; she knew that when a seed was implanted it needed time to grow, and turned our conversation to the political aims of the Retadores. I gave her a truthful eyewitness account of the utter defeat of their troops which left the fate of the Punchao up in the air, giving both Carlota and Hector the impression that the Retadores had recovered it.

Eventually she returned to the presidential palace, leaving us alone. Hector gave a sigh of relief.

‘What I was just going to ask you when we were interrupted by my wife,’ he said, ‘is did you or didn’t you leave it behind the waterfall?’

‘When we escaped by swimming, I had to leave it. On my second visit, the battlefield was swarming with looters and I hadn’t a hope.’

That was my only deliberate lie.

‘That girl hasn’t got it?’

‘I don’t see how she could have done when she is under house arrest and the police are keeping an eye on her.’

I returned to my tent at the former dig and cooked myself a meal. I had settled down with the remains of a bottle and an excellent native cigar when I noticed a footprint which had certainly not been there when I left. I rushed to the bird’s nest. The Punchao had gone. Teresa or the cook had found it. My only deliberate lie had turned out to be something near the truth.

I realised that at last I was entirely free of any connection with the Punchao; Teresa had it and was convinced of her ability to deliver it to the Retadores. That had been my intention, too, but I was far from confident that I could carry it out. Then, should I leave Malpelo alone – politics, the civil war, the whole damned lot of them – and take the first plane to anywhere or, if my air passage were blocked by Heredia, sneak on board any available ship bound for any country and then go home and enjoy my ill-gotten gains while looking for a job.

It seems unbelievable to me now that I decided to stay on. There were, I think, two reasons. The first was my vivid memory of that poor woman searching the corpses of the Retadores for the man who had loved her. There was nothing I could ever do for her, but for the sake of her bewildered little son it had become my self-conceived duty to see that the Punchao never became the swastika of Heredia.

The second reason was to dissuade Teresa from being murdered by one side or the other. To do that I had to win her trust – and how the hell was ‘the bastard’ to do that when nobody would believe that I was not firmly on the side of the Heredistas or at least a neutral like Hector? The only person to have doubts about that was Heredia himself.

In the morning my former cook came to me, wanting to know if Hector and I intended to continue the dig, in which case he would lay in some food and drink. I told him that we had decided to abandon the present excavation and try elsewhere, but that I needed him that evening and, if he were free, till further notice. I also told him that in my absence somebody had been at my tent and a shirt was missing. He looked startled. Was I sure, he asked. Nobody had been up at my tent while I was away.

‘The police were here the night I arrived.’

‘Yes, we knew that, but it was when Your Mercy first came.’

‘If you knew, you did not tell me.’

‘Not worth telling. The swine are everywhere.’

‘Someone is suspect?’

‘We are all suspect,’ he replied, and spat.

‘And I will show you a more recent footprint. Come with me!’

I led him to the tree where I had hidden the Punchao and watched his face. The footprint was still visible in the patch of damp close under the leaves. It was obviously made by the same alpagatas as he was wearing.

‘I did not take your shirt,’ he replied nervously.

‘I have not accused you. But what did you take from an old vulture’s nest? A putrid egg?’

‘I took nothing. I wanted to see if the nest was still occupied.’

‘And was the vulture wearing a shirt?’

‘The nest. The nest needs a lining sometimes. Yes, Yes. That must be it.’

‘So you did take the shirt?’

‘Yes, yes. I will climb up and wash it and give it back.’

‘Friend, you must be an honest man to be such a bad liar. Now go back and speak to the Señorita Molina secretly. Tell her that I know she has the Punchao and that the President, too, will be delighted to know it. I shall be here below the tree after the sun has set.’

‘For the love of God, Don Edmondo, do not harm her.’

‘I shall not harm her. You may come with her, if she wishes it.’

Of all the idiotic remarks I have ever made in my life that was the most half-witted. I meant it to give both of them confidence, but what I had done was to put my life in his hands. All I knew of him was that he was a passionate supporter of the Retadores and all he knew of me was that I was a friend of Hector and therefore of Heredia.

I passed the afternoon in my tent resting from my long walk and dividing my time between dozing and wondering what line I should take with Teresa and whether I should tell Hector what had really happened. I could come to no decision except to talk to her and the cook from hiding and let the game play itself.

When the sun had set, I climbed the tree which was next to that which had held the Punchao, and settled down where the leaves hid me completely from the ground. If Teresa or the cook were to fire at the nest they would miss me by miles and reveal their intention. The sun set in its usual streak of fireworks, and I was almost at once in twilight that for half an hour gorgeously lit the western sky while the land of forested hills to the east sullenly prepared for night. Teresa appeared, stepping daintily like a fawn, and then vanished. I heard her steps wandering about. She had evidently forgotten the exact bearing of the camp. The cook was not with her; it might be that he was too loyal to be trusted and likely to fire at a raised voice. She had decided to face me alone.

I lost patience and sang out, ‘Over here, señorita!’

Even so she had trouble. The right tree was a mass of black set against dark grey. If the great leaves had not swayed in the light breeze I should have been uncertain myself.

She stood below me, a slim, unreal figure in the gathering darkness.

‘Now, Mr Hawkins,’ she said. ‘Will you torture me to find out where it is? I shall only tell you lies and you will never find it.’

I have the impression that all heroic women are masochists and look forward to resisting pain.

‘Dear Teresa, I am here to talk business. Will you please realise that “the bastard” and you are both on the same side? I want to deliver the Punchao to the general of the Retadores, and a male can carry it across country undetected whereas a female cannot.’

‘You know where to find the general?’

‘No. But you do.’

‘I do not yet.’

‘Then where were you going to take the Punchao?’

‘We will find out his present headquarters on the way.’

‘Very well. And this time it is I who will be the stable boy and carry the Punchao, always riding behind you.’

‘To ensure your safety, I suppose.’

‘Quite right. At that range you could hardly miss.’

‘The only objection to your excellent plan is that I have not got the Punchao,’ she replied.

‘Then who has?’

‘Carlota? Hector? What is the point of all this planning when all you know is that it is no longer where you hid it?’

‘Why should you lie?’ I asked her.

‘And you? I believed that you really meant to give it to the Heredistas hoping for a reward.’

‘If they have it, why haven’t they shown it to the people? Why is there complete silence about their success? And remember, I would have got a bigger reward from President Heredia than from that bunch of ragged patriots. No, nobody knows that I have the Punchao but you.’

I was fairly sure of that. If Heredia had it, why hadn’t he exhibited it with drums and trumpets? Why had Carlota preserved complete silence about her father’s success?

‘Show me where you hid it?’

I led her to the tree. Even the one print of Pepe’s alpagatas on the one damp patch was now only recognisable as a shapeless dent. Teresa bent down and circled the trunk.

‘What can this be?’ she asked, drawing my attention to little patterns of parallel strips on the bark.

I supposed they were made by the vulture returning to its nest, but birds flew up; they didn’t walk up. I wished I had the use of an African tracker from the Father of his Country. Myself, I had never learned the skill. The shallow scratches faintly reminded me of the mess that a dog can make of furniture coverings.

A dog. Pepe’s precious dog. My shirt. Pepe’s guilty air. They all fitted. And he wouldn’t have had the faintest notion what to do with the Punchao even if he recognised it for what it was.

The dog had nearly always remained out of sight of the camp. Hector, who considered all dogs filthy beasts unless they were born or bred in Scotland, would not allow her to enter the camp, insisting that she would give us worms if she touched our food, hydrophobia if she slobbered on us and fleas in any case. Fleas were likely. Worms were swiftly dealt with by Pepe, and hydrophobia – well, you risk that anyway in a tropical country if you do not immediately disinfect any breaking of the skin by a dog’s tooth.

So Donna had been exiled from the main party. She was an engaging beast with a home of her own hollowed out by Pepe from a thick clump of bushes a short walk from the camp. She was delighted to be talked to and petted whenever I passed, for no doubt I carried with me half a dozen scents connected with Pepe who had bought her from an Italian immigrant when she was half-grown.

‘Come with me,’ I told Teresa. ‘I know now that Pepe gave the Punchao to a friend to take care of.’

She followed me through the undergrowth to Donna’s private enclosure. As soon as the bitch received my scent she started to give her little yelps of welcome. She was at home, and by her side was my missing shirt folded neatly around the Punchao. I was received with a grumble of protest when I picked it up – only a grumble, for the shirt obviously belonged to me after five days of pouring sweat into it. What had led to Donna’s clawing at the tree? Scent, nothing but scent. Did she expect to find me inside the shirt? Teresa was not allowed to touch it.

‘She’ll be useful on the march,’ I said, ‘provided Pepe comes too.’

‘What march?’

‘To the present headquarters of the Retadores.’

I folded back the shirt. Moonlight revealed a new glory of the Punchao. The golden disk displayed a ghost of the moon’s silver. I dreamed of telling Hector that he should arrange special visits to the museum on the nights of full moon and take the Punchao from its case to receive the curious reflection.

‘Will Pepe come with us? I hardly know him.’

‘Of course. He is as passionate a Retadore as you. But I must wait here till he turns up to give Donna her breakfast.’

‘What shall we give her to eat on the march?’

‘She will look after that. Partridges will find themselves in the pot before they know it. Now if you come here with three horses early in the morning, Pepe and I will be ready for you.’

‘But the police will miss the horses and follow our tracks to make sure where they have gone. If I don’t turn up it will mean that I have been arrested and shut up in the house. You and Pepe must then go on alone.’

She slipped away into the trees. I wanted to catch Pepe at his first appearance, so I lay down across the entrance to Donna’s hollow and dozed the rest of the night away.

At dawn I was woken up by Donna’s special greeting to Pepe, between a low bark and an almost human speech of greeting. Her nose was magnificently sensitive. It was some time before he actually arrived. On seeing me, his hand dropped to his knife.

‘Put that away, friend,’ I said, ‘and tell Donna that as soon as all three of us have had breakfast, you, the Señorita Molina and I start the march to take the Punchao to the general of the Retadores.’

‘Then this is the Punchao?’ he asked in a voice which showed that he thought it possible, but couldn’t believe in the dream.

I raised it clear of the shirt so that it took the first light of the rising sun. Pepe dropped to his knees and lifted his hands in adoration. The first was his Christian response; the second an unconscious obeisance to some remnant of the old religion underlining, for me, Heredia’s brilliance in choosing the Punchao for his emblem of government.

I told Pepe of Teresa’s intention of securing it for the Retadores. He was even more enthusiastic than I had anticipated and begged me to let him accompany us.

‘I shall be counting on you and Donna too, but are you married?’

‘Not yet. But after this she will know that I am a man worthy of her.’

We heard a horse approaching, but only one, and Teresa’s head and shoulders appeared above the screen of bushes.

‘I could only get away with one,’ she said. ‘The same horse as before. I think the police were suspicious. There was a guard on the stables.’

‘Well, you and I will walk with Donna,’ I said to Pepe, ‘and God be with us!’

‘We will take turns to ride,’ Teresa ordered.

We struck inland to the heart of the mountains and that was the last we saw of the sea. Progress was slow. It took us three days to reach the camp of the Retadores from which they had launched their attack on the capital and then had set out, after evacuating the women and children, on that gruelling march to the sea. Our own tracks were plain enough. Donna, faced by unfamiliar scents, was no help apart from showing us that the refugees had divided into three parties. We chose the wrong third, which appeared to be heading for the northern frontier. I could see why Heredia in spite of continual reported victories found it hard to pin down any concentration of Retadores, who attacked, disengaged and bolted to their villages leaving a scatter of dead and wounded behind them. Prisoners were his only hope of gaining useful intelligence, and they were few.

We let it be known that the daughter of the executed General Molinos was with us and at last came upon one of his supporters who recognised her. Till then, avoiding large villages, we had fallen in with foresters and field workers who would not talk and were useless. This fellow had been a corporal in the palace guard – one of the few who had vanished into the hills after the capture of General Molinos – and rejoiced to see that Teresa was alive. He told us that all the provincial police had been warned to look out for a party, two on foot and one on a horse, who were to be instantly arrested and searched. One was believed to be a Russian who must be interrogated until he died. That was cheerful. It was, of course, inevitable that any foreigner in arms should be reported as Russian. That suited Heredia, whether he believed it or not, and ensured a further supply of American arms.

‘Are you Russian?’ the ex-corporal asked me.

‘As much as you.’

‘I thought so, for it is known that all Russians wear fur hats.’

The rumour was enough to send us during the night as far from the village as we could reasonably get, aiming vaguely at the north-western frontier which gave us some hope of escape if we were caught. Our friend replenished our supplies, including a fat chipmunk for Donna. We found that she had killed a hen being short of meat, for which we paid generously and would not allow her to share in spite of her mild protests. Pepe interpreted her remarks as: (a) reproach; I intended this for you; (b) a louder, sharp bark: ‘You’re a bunch of shits’; (c) with downcast brown eyes: ‘Well, I know I am only a dog.’

It did not seem a time for discipline, so while Pepe was portioning out the bird with his back to us, I secreted a wing from my plate. She had the sense to make no remarks and vanished with it out of hearing.

Chapter Six

We could get no certain information of where the main body of the Retadores was. If Heredia had heard of us at all, we must also have been a puzzle to him. Since he did not know that we had the Punchao, Teresa’s escape from her family home must have appeared to him merely a wild attempt to join the insurgents. As for me, I was nothing more than an enigmatic nuisance who should be promptly expelled from the country as soon as captured, for he wanted no complications with the British. I doubt if Pepe was even missed.

Hector? Well, he would be embarrassed by my disappearance but would no doubt devise some archaeological explanation for it. Much later I heard that he had invented an appointment with a historical society in Panama whom he described as useless people who had got their dates wrong and, like all romantic amateurs, leaped upon impossible theories. As nobody knew my writing, except for my signature on permits, Hector forged a note from me explaining that I had received reliable news that the Punchao was being offered for sale in Mexico. I could imagine that Carlota had asked emphatically why the devil I had not said so before.

Meanwhile we were pretty well hidden in a cave which was wide enough to provide quarters for Teresa’s horse and opened into a passage for us. Pepe volunteered to return to Ramales and get the latest news. He left Donna behind for she was his only connection with us. Pepe was away most of the day singing the praises of Heredia in the local café, and between silences and enthusiasm had managed to sort out the supporters of both parties. He had left with a party of Heredistas for their favourite taverna but had learned no more than that a strong force of Retadores was up against the frontier and that the government was trying to pin them there and destroy them.

Teresa changed her clothes and reappeared as a woman. We decided that she should ride the horse with Donna at heel as protection, keeping her distance from us until after dark. The change of sex seemed to me premature for we knew nothing of the intentions of the Heredista command, and with a supposed Russian in our party we should not be given time for conversation.

‘Nothing is going to be easy,’ she reminded me, ‘unless I am recognised by the Retadores as my father’s daughter. And that is impossible unless I am dressed as a woman.’

In the morning we had a stroke of luck; we crossed the line of a ragged column moving towards the northern frontier, and the tracks of their boots, and even of bare feet, showed that they were Retadores. Teresa considered me the military expert, and it was agreed that I should take the horse and try to find out whether this party were marching to join their main body.

So I rode off on their tracks which were easy to follow and aimed steadily north-west; but all I could find out was that they were certainly those of Retadores. At one point where the ground was boggy I got mixed up and travelled on some miles before I realised that the line of march had doubled in width and that I must be following the vanguard of pursuing Heredistas. Well, that information was valuable too, if they were bound for the position of their own troops. So I followed in case the rising ground gave me a chance of seeing them. It did. They were bivouacked on dry ground, and beyond them was the gleam of a little river in the last of the setting sun. Not a bad position, I thought, if they expected to be attacked, but probably it was only the end of a hard day’s march.

I rode on keeping the river on my left and wondering where their rearguard was. The answer came almost immediately, and my horse and I galloped out of there at the first shot. They could have had a valuable prisoner if they had waited a little longer. At any rate, I had discovered enough to make the journey worthwhile.

I returned at first light with at least one good bit of news. I had found a truck bogged down, abandoned and possibly waiting for dawn to be recovered. It was carrying supplies – very welcome to us – and the crew must have left it to be hauled out in the morning. The engine started at the second pull, so we unloaded it and shoved its cargo of boxes and sacks under the back wheels. Then with the help of my weary horse we managed to coax it up the last little slope which had beaten it. There was still no sight of the enemy, but we could look down on the river and knew more or less where the command post of the Retadores would be. All we had were four rifles from the abandoned truck, so we had nothing to gain by joining the coming battle. I had some difficulty in convincing Teresa of that. All we needed was a clear run to the nearest command post and instructions of where to deliver the Punchao.

Our own troops – I may now call them so – were in cover among the little valleys and peaks through which occasional streams rippled down to the river. They had to win the coming battle, for they had chosen to concentrate near the frontier and drive the enemy into the marshes. It seemed to me that Heredia was not in his usual form.

The Retadores had the advantage of irregularly rising ground; little hillocks and ridges which gave them shelter till they were ready to attack. They were the weaker side and there was no point in exposing themselves to make the difficult crossing of the river. The party began with a feeble bombardment by the Heredistas which continued until they realised that the enemy could not be dislodged by the few shells which skimmed the top of the intervening ridges. The Retadores could very well stay where they were and laugh; but they tried one futile and furious attack, were allowed to reach the river and were then massacred on its banks.

Both sides were now cautious. From our position we could see most of the action, and unless some party came out to recover the truck and its supplies we were safe as war correspondents. Teresa was bursting to pick up a rifle and join the fun. I reminded her that we could do no good and were the guardians of the Punchao.

But men were dropping from the Retarodes’ small-arms fire and the Heredistas became impatient. They too tried to ford the river where it was shallowest and suffered the same losses as the rebels had earlier. There were already streaks and patches of red where bodies had been flung aside by rocks protruding from the bottom.

I was by now as much bored as horrified by this futile battle and one hand had started to play with Donna who was lying alongside me when Teresa cried:

‘Oh God, no!’

She was looking downriver where I saw four tanks in line, bouncing, sliding and recovering. They were still out of sight of the defenders for they had come across a bridge over the curve of the river not far from the point where I had been shot at the previous evening.

There the defenders had a post which had not been engaged at all or fired a shot except the one directed at me. We could see them running for their lives to gain the shelter of – at a guess – the reserves of the Retadores whose glimpsed movements were as agitated as those of a disturbed antheap. They hadn’t a hope. Heredia had planned the battle well unless his opponents had armour-piercing shells which he knew they had not. I saw a hit on a track which halted the leading tank, but the other three roared on, turning the tributary streams into little valleys of death. The Retadores broke and scrambled over the ridges towards the frontier. The mass of the Heredistas followed wading, swimming and spraying the fugitives with ill-aimed rifle fire.

Teresa, Pepe and I stood up, I at least hoping for a parley with one of the small parties of Heredistas who had formed up, better disciplined than their raging comrades, on our side of the river as if to show their contempt for those bloodthirsty comrades who had not waited for orders but given chase like a pack on the scent.

‘The end of the Retadores for a generation,’ I exclaimed.

‘No!’ Teresa answered, her eyes hard and shining as the diamonds on the Punchao. ‘Give it to me!’

I took it from the horse’s back, unwrapped it and put it into her outstretched hands. I thought she meant to save it from capture by racing down into the trees behind us before the victorious troops paid any attention to the three isolated civilians. Myself I waited for death and hoped it would come by a single shot. Pepe laid his hand on Donna’s head in a gesture of comfort.

Teresa walked over the ridge into full view of the enemy and held up the Punchao with both arms while Pepe and Donna followed a few paces behind, he proud and calm as befitted an ex-corporal, Donna with all four legs standing to attention and muzzle pointing fearlessly at the unknown.

The enemy company advanced, still in fairly good order. I could see that they were all Indians or mestizos. They were silent as she came down the hill towards them.

‘Here is your hope of peace!’ she cried in a voice which rang purest silver. ‘Respect it.’

A sergeant major stepped in front of his company, called them to attention and to order arms. He then marched forward and saluted her.

‘Stay with me,’ she answered, ‘and fight for justice and mercy! With the help of God, I will lead you in the name of your women and children. I am the daughter of General Molinos.’

The sergeant major’s response was immediate.

‘Company, present arms! What will you choose? The leadership of this brave woman or of the brute who calls himself President of Malpelo?’

There was a roar of Viva Molinos as if the shots which had killed him had all been blank. He must have seemed, in the memory of many who had suffered under Heredia, a true and honourable soldier contrasted with the brutality of Heredia’s police and the cruelty of his army. The murders and tortures in his prisons which they had accepted with coarse laughter or silence were revealed, as if in confession before a priest, as debaucheries they wanted to be absolved of by another Molinos.

The sergeant major stepped forward and bowed to the Punchao as if it had been the Cross.

‘And you, companero?’ he asked Pepe. ‘I can see you have been a soldier. Shall we work together?’ He turned to me, ‘And you? You are a foreigner?’

‘I am English, sergeant major.’

‘Then I am not surprised to find you here on the side of the people. Englishmen and Spaniards, they have their sins but stand for justice.’

A Spaniard he called himself proudly. He was as black as my hat, bless him!

‘And the dog? What is she?’ he asked to raise a laugh.

‘She is Italian,’ Pepe replied with his first smile, ‘and cares for liberty and her belly. Salute, Donna!’

That was an engaging trick which I had not seen before. She sat smartly on her hindquarters and raised a paw to her muzzle in a very fair imitation of a salute.

He should have been a politician, the sergeant major. I could see that perhaps only a dozen of the company were not in agreement.

‘What shall we eat?’ one of them shouted.

‘What our fellow citizens give us in gratitude.’

‘And what we take from our officers,’ Pepe replied, who seemed none too sure of the gratitude, ‘which is in the truck there. If we hurry, your commander will think we are freeing it for his use.’

They fell upon the truck and lifted it to get at the stores which were under the wheels. By the time that their comrades came over the ridge they were running downhill and had dispersed among the trees.

It seemed to me that we should all be caught and promptly shot as mutineers. For the time being, however, there we were like any pack of tropical beasts escaped from the zoo and safe among the trees. We had a good start. An attempt was made to follow us, but half-hearted, Teresa turned round in a gap of the forest and held up the Punchao to the midday sun. The troops wavered in astonishment and were ordered back to the bank of the river lest some of them should be tempted to join the almost mythical symbol.

The sergeant major who had assumed command asked me to ride out and report the movements of the enemy. I felt happier on foot and left the horse to graze when I was not far from our former camp. It was empty except for the three tanks which had returned from the frontier. The crews were having a late breakfast. I was tempted to strike a late blow for liberty by turning on the fuel and putting a match to it, but I couldn’t find the damned tap. My short military experience with the African Father of his Country had not extended to armoured vehicles. I thought of shooting the crews but then remembered that this was not my war and so mounted my horse and returned to the mutineers, as feebly as any other staff officer, with the news that the enemy had not moved and that for the present we were safe. We were all massed in a glade, not unlike a much larger edition of Donna’s private kennel, with the sergeant major and Teresa in the centre and the Punchao between them. It was attached to the tip of a light pole, just cut from some crimson wood, and irresistibly recalled the Eagle of a Roman legion.

The sergeant major addressed us. He was a primitive champion of democracy. He told us that we were all equal but must have discipline. Without discipline we could never be a fighting force and he would suggest, only suggest, what our organisation should be. If they approved they were to raise their hands.

‘Our Commander-in-Chief will be the Señorita Molino Cisneros by right of birth.’

They were startled but raised their hands in approval without a moment’s hesitation.

‘I, having some experience of command, shall be her Chief of Staff.’

All agreed with a solemnity which showed they were thankful to have him.

‘And now, I would like this Englishman as my Chief of Intelligence.’

I was somewhat alarmed at my appointment which was accepted. But Intelligence has to analyse the motives of allies and enemies, and I certainly had more experience than any of them.

‘I accept with pride, companeros,’ I said, ‘but you must remember that it may be my duty at some time to negotiate with supporters of Heredia. I beg you to trust me. Viva Malpelo! Viva la Muerte!’

I borrowed that one from the Spanish Civil War. It appeared to be new to them and aroused wild enthusiasm.

We cleaned up that gallant horse, setting Teresa in the saddle, and since she could not well carry the red flagpole we chose Pepe as her standard bearer and Donna as her heraldic beast.

What was left of the Retadores we did not know nor how many of them had escaped across the frontier. In any case the sergeant major had no intention of looking for them and handing over the Punchao. He decided to march on the village which Pepe, after his visit before the battle, had reported to be mainly of sympathisers. There we would get all the news of the district and might even find some recruits.

We should have liked to accompany our column with a band. In its absence we marched down the main street in good order singing the anthem of the Retadores about the President, his wife and his amusements which would have ensured a court martial for any man who was word perfect. I regret to say that Teresa must have learned it in the London office and added a disgusting line or two of, I hope, the polo player’s invention.

There was no opposition but, on the other hand, there were no recruits for us, for the telephone had carried the news of the utter defeat of the Retadores. We shut the three village policemen in the local gaol and then privately removed their trousers in order not to offend the delicacy of our Joan of Arc who would willingly have shot the lot of them. The genuine Heredistas locked their houses and remained inside. We commandeered food, drank the local tavern dry and added a few verses to our marching song in the absence of our commander who had been taken under the protection of a pair of admiring communist sisters, bravely expecting the worst in spite of the incoherent assurances of our Chief of Staff.

Chapter Seven

Disaster struck us at first light. I was awakened by the rush of feet, the clamour of frightened military voices and the professional roaring of the sergeant major. A party of Heredistas, preceded by three tanks, were reported to be crossing the river. I cleared off towards thick cover with Pepe, Donna and Teresa who had no time to dress again as a man but still proudly carried the Punchao. The horse was abandoned to our friends.

As we stumbled away from the village and the merciless chatter of machine-guns we came across a cleft covered by undergrowth and decided that it would have to do. Teresa was physically and emotionally exhausted but still carried the Punchao round her neck and would not give it up. Disappointment, the death of her new comrades and lack of sleep had all persuaded her that she was not a commander but a mere mascot.

‘Where can I go to escape?’ she asked hopelessly.

‘Straight to Hector.’

‘He cannot protect me.’

‘He will if anyone can. I shall find a way of letting him know.’

‘You will forgive me?’

‘What for? Courage?’

‘Oh God! The courage has been yours for trusting me.’

She lifted the Punchao from her neck and gave it to me. I slipped it on inside my shirt, still warm from her body.

‘Now you must dress as a man from the village.’

‘How can I?’

‘Stay here! I will bring you some clothes. You mustn’t mind if I take them from the dead.’

She shivered and cried ‘No.’ But I persuaded her that she must.

‘Now stay here with Pepe and Donna till I return.’

I approached Ramales, the village which we had entered in triumph the previous night. In the only street of which I had a clear view three policemen were stalking about fully dressed and looking very pleased with themselves. The mutineers were some way out to my left and I took them at first for flower beds – a rare decoration for a village – until I saw that they were the ranks of the dead. They had evidently been taken out in batches and shot. I dared not be seen looking along the red rivulets for sizes, so I turned back into the trees following the line of the tanks and found three bodies, whose faces I recognised, shot down on the very edge of safety. One was a small, slender Indian who had been killed outright by a single clean shot in the head. He was the best I could do, and I returned to Teresa with his shirt, trousers and boots.

‘Must I?’ she asked, shying away from the dead man’s clothing.

‘If you want to escape Heredia’s vengeance, yes, Teresa.’

‘Drop them in the puddle.’

I did and wrung them out.

‘You can wear them on top of your own. Now go with Pepe and Donna. Both are devoted to you.’

I gave her a note to Hector, saying: ‘Here is a recruit for your labour force. Look after him.’

‘Where will she be safe?’ Pepe asked.

‘Nowhere. But take her to Donna’s splendid kennel if you can reach it and then do whatever McMurtrie tells you. Look after her, dear friend!’

‘I promise you that I will die before she does.’

‘Then – till we meet again. Go as far as you safely can before dark!’

Teresa had rubbed her face with mud and shortened her hair to shoulder length by hacking at it with a knife. She was only vaguely female under the dead man’s shirt and could pass as Pepe’s male friend. Two little channels in the mud showed that her eyes were wet, but she smiled as she said to me:

‘Goodbye, gallant bastard!’

I kissed the hand she held out to me and the three of them – I include the fearless Donna – vanished into the trees like the first puzzled spectres of the dead.

Myself, I decided to go straight for the capital, dropping the Punchao in a safe hiding place on the way and with some sort of believable story still to be composed. How many of the Heredistas had seen me? Well, few of the victorious army but most of the Retadores in the village; to them, however, I was not the Chief of Intelligence appointed by the sergeant major but a mystery. Was I a foreigner? I flatter myself that it was not too obvious, but the sergeant major had undoubtedly been talking and under the influence of the bottle had probably made me a foreign expert. A Russian? Why not? But I did not know how Heredia would treat a Russian prisoner. Interrogation and hide the body, probably.

I did not dare to sleep, and followed the tracks of the Retadores which would eventually lead me back to the start of the fatal advance. Several of them had had the same plan and instead of bolting to safety and internment across the frontier had allowed Heredia’s army to pass them and then, seeing that defeat was inevitable, had turned back for home. The ground was bone hard and I made good time until the eastern sky began to lighten and I realised that I must seek temporary cover. In the darkness, I had glimpsed small parties of twos or threes on their way to the villages or the capital. These fugitives, however, were always ahead of me and thus seen or heard before I ran into them. I wondered what route Pepe and Teresa had taken and thought it likely, since Pepe knew the country, that they had marched due south for several days before turning west for the capital or Hector’s excavation.

The journey was long but quite uneventful. Food was the only problem, but if I made my occasional purchases after dark no questions were asked – proof that the peasants were quietly on the side of the Retadores. When at last I came in sight of Hector’s dig I found that the solitary tent was still in place and I hid in the tall grass of the little valley for a night and a morning to watch. No one came near it. Pepe, Teresa and Donna had evidently not yet arrived. Donna’s enclosure was not far away, and after cleaning myself up so far as possible I made it my headquarters. It was so quiet that I could have stayed there for ever given a supply of food and drink.

Again I launched myself like an ape at the drooping branch which cracked as I hit it. Thankfully, I took off the Punchao and put it back in the vulture’s nest which was known only to Pepe and Donna and as safe as anywhere else. The next infernally difficult task was to get in touch with Hector, for there was no telephone nearer than Nueva Beria and I should be recognised.

On the third morning, I was awakened by a bedraggled Donna desperately thirsty and with a paw from which the claws had been brutally torn. Where had she come from and how could I find it out? Well, the only way was by interrogation while I cleaned up the paw which she held out to me.

‘Pepe?’

She at once got up and prepared to lead me to him.

‘Teresa?’

The name meant nothing to her. So I tried: ‘La Señorita?’

She gave a little moaning bark.

‘Dead?’

I cannot remember exactly how Donna let me know she was alive. I think she answered my eyes with her own and that they were cheerful. At any rate I had no doubt what she intended to convey.

‘Near?’

I accompanied the question by a sweep of the arms covering the horizon.

Donna routed about in her empty bowl, found nothing and lifted her head to give me a long look.

‘Hungry?’

She fell upon the stew which I had prepared overnight for breakfast but picked up the largest chop in her mouth and waited.

‘Off we go then! Show me Pepe!’

Any intelligent dog would have taken me to Pepe’s village and her permanent home, but the ultra-intelligent Donna knew that we were hiding from danger. She led me for mile after mile through unknown country, still with the chop in her mouth, until I picked up a little stream which looked vaguely familiar and halted to look round. Yes, it was indeed familiar. We had crossed it on the way to the cave where we three and Teresa’s horse had spent the night. I petted and praised her to which she responded by waving her tail as much as to say quite undeservedly ‘How clever you are!’ I left the rest of the journey to her with confidence and was not surprised when she caught the scent of the missing couple and quickened her limping pace.

Teresa, still dressed as a boy, was lying down at the entrance to the cave.

‘Oh, thank God!’ she cried.

She kissed Donna before me – very rightly, but I noticed that I was a little jealous – and led us into the cave. Poor Pepe lay there, his leg broken below the knee and hot with fever. His first thought was of the Punchao.

‘You have it?’ he asked.

‘Yes. And safe. Forgive me, old comrade, if I do not tell you where it is. You have enough to bear. How did this happen? Are you wounded?’

‘No. A foolishness. I slipped into a crevice here, and the leg broke cleanly. The señorita would not leave me and so we sent Donna to find you.’

I felt the leg, but even the lightest touch made him squeal. The skin was not broken, but the whole wound was angry.

‘How long ago was this?’ I asked Teresa.

‘Three days ago – when we were scrambling down to the cave.’

‘Has he eaten?’

‘No. Neither of us. We were hurrying to meet you and knew you would have food wherever you were.’

Well, that’s as good a reputation to have as another.

I busied myself with the food I had brought. When it was grilled and ready, Pepe said that he could not eat and that Donna deserved to have his share.

‘Indeed she does,’ I told him. ‘And she shall share my portion with the señorita and you. I ate well last night.’

We gave Pepe a little bread dipped in gravy, but his stomach could not hold it.

‘Is there a doctor anywhere near whom we can trust?’ I asked him. ‘Remember that he will see at once that this is not a wound but an accident.’

‘There is a curandera who lives outside Ramales.’

‘Can I reach her without being seen?’

‘Yes, if you are careful, friend. She lives alone in a shack outside the village with her own little garden. We passed close to it.’

‘Her sympathies are with us?’

‘If she has any they will be with the poor.’

It was the village which Pepe had visited where a hungry Donna had stolen a hen. I had noticed such a shack and wondered at its isolation.

There was a bright half-moon and I reckoned that I could be there before dawn. I left Donna with Teresa and Pepe and started off for the little square of highly cultivated green standing half a mile or so above our patch. At the time, I had wondered at its isolation.

I reached it well before dawn and kept knocking at the door until at last the curandera appeared with a volley of curses which, if she had any power, would certainly have killed or castrated me on the spot. The door flew open, revealing a large woman of purest black, in some sort of nightgown. I wished her a formal and elaborate good morning and begged her not to curse me or send me away for I came on behalf of a friend who had broken his leg and would die if I could not bring help.

‘I believe you are the Russian who passed by here some days ago,’ she replied. ‘Go away!’

‘I am no Russian but an Englishman and I have been told by my friend Pepe that you are his only hope.’

‘And what do you want of a poor woman when it is known that all Englishmen are rich?’

‘In my home I may be, but here I am nobody.’

‘Then tell me what happened and do not lie or I shall know it.’

I saw then that whether or not her curses were effective I must treat her with the utmost respect.

‘Muy respectable señora,’ I began, and told her that there were three of us, two men and a woman, escaping from the battle and one of us had broken his leg far from anywhere.

‘Wounded, I suppose.’

‘No, I swear to you.’

‘And where is he going?’

‘That is in God’s hands. He has escaped one death and we call on your charity to help him escape from another.’

‘So what do you want from a poor black woman?’

‘Your pity, two splints and your care if you can give it without danger to yourself.’

The first segment of the sun appeared over the hill that I had crossed. She bowed to it and so did I.

‘Why did you do that?’ she asked.

‘Because I have held the Punchao del Dia in my hands.’

‘Wait! I must load my donkey.’

She returned to the house and shut the door. In five minutes she appeared again from the cultivated strip at the back with the donkey. Although a little beast, it was loaded with two splints, two pitchers of water from her own well and a sort of girth with a back rest. She locked up her house and we started off by a hardly perceptible path zig-zagging up through the bushes which was a much shorter route to the cave than that which I had followed.

We were greeted by a full-throated growl from Donna who launched herself downhill at the party. The curandera spoke four unintelligible words and Donna fell in quietly by the side of the donkey. I do not think she could have caught my scent, for the wind was the wrong way and the curandera and her donkey put up a very powerful scent between them – not of dirt but of the leaves and twigs crushed by our passage.

Teresa sprang up from the gravel of the cave.

‘What the devil have you brought?’ she asked.

‘The best doctor I could get. Did you expect her to arrive in a Hispano-Suiza?’ I was thinking of the high-powered medicos at the hotel on the Costa Brava in Spain.

‘God help him!’ she exclaimed.

‘This is the least of His servants, but He will. Señora, may I present to you the daughter of General Molinos.’

The old girl was immensely impressed by my courtesy the wrong way round. She swept a very creditable curtsey and told Teresa to have no fear.

She then washed the leg with cold water seeping from the rock and into which she threw a powder which evidently had some analgesic quality, for Pepe only occasionally gave a moan as she set and splinted the bone. We lifted him on to the donkey while Donna crouched at his good leg, regarding us with deep suspicion.

The curandera led us down her private path unseen until we reached her isolated cottage – isolated, I think, because her patients were sometimes wanted by the police. There she placed Pepe in what I might call her infirmary, a dark underground den in her garden with the entrance hidden among low, thick bushes. To judge by the little I knew of actual treatment in the Costa Brava hotel, his temperature had gone down. She had no thermometer, apparently trusting to her own sensitive fingers. Donna at any rate was satisfied and went to sleep beside her master’s primitive cot.

‘You two must stay here till dusk,’ she said.

‘Good! Can you telephone the capital for me?’

‘I do not understand the telephone. I will ask a friend to do it.’

That was awkward. I had no doubt that calls to the capital were monitored by Heredia’s police. I did not know that at the moment I was supposed to be returning from Mexico where I had gone to investigate a rumour that the Punchao was being offered for sale.

There was nothing for it but to take the risk. After all, it might not be known that I had been present at the defeat of the Retadores and had accompanied the party of mutineers whose bodies were now decorating the hillside. But a single captured prisoner who could still talk would leave no doubt that the mysterious Englishman was me.

So Ramales was impossible but nothing was known against me in Nueva Beria. The inhabitants would only remember me as an English friend of Hector who had been working with him at the dig. I set off after dark and covered half the distance before weariness overtook my legs. I had not slept at all on the previous night and not much on any other.

Arriving early in the afternoon it occurred to me that the safest way of getting in touch with Hector was by telegram to the Museo Nacional. If he was not in his office then those respectful assistant curators would know where to find him and do my telephoning for me. So I went straight to the Post Office and put in an urgent telegram to Hector at the Museum:

COME TO OUR DIG SOONEST EDMONDO.

The tent, looking now a little battered, was still in place and a home for all the flies in Malpelo, so I squirted it out and waited there for Hector. He appeared on horseback in the evening, dismounted in the deepest excavation upstream and beckoned me to join him.

‘That tent might be bugged,’ he explained. ‘We aren’t living in the blessed nineteenth century any more. God, I am glad to find you alive!’

‘Any reason why I shouldn’t be?’

‘Nothing definite except that your Teresa has escaped from house arrest and was last heard of inviting government troops to mutiny. Now where were you?’

‘Over the frontier, I think.’

‘Well, that will do for the moment.’

He then told me how he had covered my disappearance by inventing the story of an appointment with the historical society of Panama while on the track of a rumour that the Punchao was going to be up for sale in Panama or Mexico. I could imagine that Carlota had asked emphatically why I had not said so before. At any rate, I was now on my way back.

While we lay on the cool grass I gave him the full story of what had really happened. He pulled out a half-bottle of the best French brandy from the palace cellars.

‘I foresaw that we were going to need this,’ he said. ‘My reaction to your story – immediate and so probably wrong – is that you should take anything larger than a rowing-boat and get out of this country. And if you see your Joan of Arc again, take her with you and drop her overboard. Now where is the Punchao?’

‘Probably still where I put it.’

‘Not talking, eh? Well, it can stay there until that bloody man, my dear father-in-law, is roasting in hell.’

‘I hope that meanwhile he is not having this conversation taped.’

‘Don’t worry about that. It’s impossible in the middle of nowhere. It will take a little while before he realises that if his Heredistas have not got the Punchao, then you have. Get out now before you can be interrogated!’

‘How? The frontier is closed tight by his army.’

‘That shouldn’t give you much trouble. And you can count on me to do whatever I can. Meanwhile, let me know where you are through my assistants as this time.’

He rode off, avoiding Nueva Beria. His quick journey from Puerto Santa Maria by a museum car was thanks to one of his assistants who had also arranged for a horse to meet him not far from the point where Teresa and I had stopped that friendly driver to take us to the capital to get married. It seemed to me to have been a dangerous proceeding excusable only by the necessity of answering my cry for help as soon as possible. But there it was. My only task now was to get over the frontier before I was stopped.

It seemed to me that my best bet was the sea, if I could bribe a fishing-boat like that which had carried Teresa to the coast. Or should I make a flying visit to the hotel where I had stayed, pick up my bag, take a taxi to the dock and be off on the first boat leaving for anywhere? My passport had not yet been confiscated. On the other hand, I disliked leaving Pepe and Donna with the curandera, to say nothing of Teresa. She had no future. The moment after Heredia’s police set eyes on my Joan of Arc she would be taken to the capital and quietly suffer the fate that dictators arranged for their opponents. No, that could not be allowed.

So I set off again on my weary way to Ramales, sneaking along on the unmistakeable tracks of the Retadores moving up to their position. Four days it took me till I was lying safely in the curandera’s cabbage patch. That one of the three was still in the infirmary was proved by a low growl from Donna. She had evidently been trained by Pepe not to make a sound loud enough to reveal their presence.

I stayed quietly where I was till a grey dawn – no splendour of the Punchao this time – and gently revealed myself to the curandera when she left the cottage to draw water.

‘What do you want, Englishman?’ she said.

‘Just to see how you all are.’

‘In another day he will be able to walk.’

‘And the Señorita Molino?’

‘Gone.’

I made no remark, and she took me down to see Pepe. Donna planted her paws on my shoulders with such a welcome that she nearly knocked me down. Her unnatural silence had not warned me to expect it. Pepe had his leg in plaster. His colour had returned. It was evident that only time was needed before the leg was as good as new.

‘Pepe, this is splendid,’ I exclaimed.

‘Yes. Another week and she will turn me loose on a crutch. But where shall I go? I cannot walk all the way to my village.’

‘If you have a good story, Señor McMurtrie will back it up. Now did the Señorita say where she was going?’

‘She said she was going to play polo.’

It took a few seconds for memory to recall the polo player. Of course! The polite Don Felipe Montes who had interrogated me in London! He might indeed be useful in Malpelo now that I was risking my life on his side to say nothing of my appendages such as teeth, joints and testicles.

‘Curandera de mi alma, do you have any knowledge of a certain Don Felipe Montes?’

‘I should say so, but I am told he is in London.’

‘And if he were in Malpelo where would I find him?’

‘I do not know, Señor Ingles, and if you ask no one would tell you.’

‘That is a pity. Well, I will be on my way.’

I pulled out my remaining money – still quite a lot for a fugitive – and gave her ten thousand pesos.

She shook her fine black head and said it was too much.

‘Nothing is too much for your kindness and trust, señora. All I ask of you is to see that our Pepe finds transport to his home.’

Leaving those two friends after embracing them both, I felt for the first time utterly alone with police and military howling for my blood. And where was Teresa? Dressed as a boy or as herself? At the head of a ragged band of fugitives or wandering from cave to cave or bush to bush for which she was entirely unfitted? If I knew the answer I could find her. But the answer was obvious. She was bound for the capital where the underground organisation of Retadores would make her disappear. And why so much anxiety for Teresa when I ought to be thinking of the Punchao? To hell with the Punchao! It could stay where it was till the tree died and revealed its secret to the next generation.

Then I must reach Puerto Santa Maria very quickly before Heredia could piece together his confusing intelligence report. My only hope would be that improbable fishing-boat or a permanent disguise in the city slums. A car then? There must be a number of them just asking to be stolen, but I was pretty sure to be stopped anywhere on the road which must still be picketed by police on the look-out for Retadores escaping from the destruction of their army. Horse, bicycle and foot were all too slow.

Wandering cautiously parallel to the river I came upon the ration truck with the remains of its cargo strewn about the grass, lopsided, abandoned, desolate as any other detritus of war. Evidently, the Heredistas had left it to be recovered later on when all military waste had been buried or collected. It looked abandoned among its scattered boxes and sacks and the deep muddy footprints of men and the straining horse. I let it slide down the hill and then started the engine. Perfect. Not a hiccup. I took the cap, tunic and papers of a dead Heredista who should have been buried much deeper and we were away on the road to Nueva Beria and the capital.

I was waved through the first two road controls without difficulty; speaking as little as possible since my accent – as unmistakeable as that of the North American in England – could have led to questioning. My troubles began outside Puerto Santa Maria when I was ordered to get out and show my papers at the bridge over a river. I handed them over and before the corporal had a chance to look at them said that I was bursting for a shit and bolted for the latrine which, as a notice informed me, was just round the corner.

The luck of the Hawkins was in. The arrangements were primitive. I jumped into the first compartment, locked the door, scaled the dividing partition into the next stall and was away. I really do not know what an escaping criminal would do without public lavatories. I reckoned I would have a couple of minutes before the corporal got tired of waiting, hammered on the door, got no reply and suspected that he had been tricked. By that time I was back in the cab of my truck and over the bridge. I even recovered my papers which the corporal had left on his desk while hammering at the door. I threw cap and tunic into the river and walked away a free civilian looking as scruffy as any other.

Now where to go? It had to be one of the poorest districts, and while looking for it I arrived at the fishing quay. Every group of two or three boats had a police guard. To get on board clandestinely was impossible. I was amazed at the efficiency with which the landing of fish seemed to be controlled. Heredia had obviously disciplined the fish market. An inspector accompanied by two assistants was going from boat to boat checking invoices and taking notes of approximate catch. However, he might have his price if I could get him alone and I had enough money. I watched him talking to a fishing captain who was evidently alarmed at the presence of such a high-powered inspector looking as if he had just bought his uniform from an expensive naval outfitter.

I walked a little way up the quay and saw that this was the only boat in the group which had finished discharging and was ready for sea. I tried to recall a thought which had flickered through my head and been ignored as fanciful comment: that the inspector looked as if he had just bought his uniform from an expensive outfitter. He had, by God! I took a close look at the naval beard.

I asked the cop on duty who he was. He replied that he was an officer from the Ministry of Marine. Started to interfere with honest seamen they had now! He had been down there three times since the morning on quick visits to inspect the ship’s papers.

‘Can I go on board and talk to him? I’m a skilled fisherman and want a job.’

‘You can, but stay in sight,’ he replied.

I went aboard and touched my forelock to the inspector.

‘Got a job, captain?’

Close to and only because I suspected it, I saw that the beard was false.

‘You are a Spaniard?’ he asked.

I recognised his voice, for I had once listened to it with considerable anxiety.

‘I am an Englishman and we met in London. The Señorita Teresa may have mentioned my name.’

He showed no surprise. That, I think, was his greatest asset as an undercover operator.

‘Are we ready for sea?’ he asked one of his two companions.

‘Nearly.’

‘Nearly is not enough. We have given the game away.’

An armed cutter was just turning across the entrance to the dock.

‘I should not have risked that third inspection,’ he said. ‘Now follow us and do whatever we do,’ he added to me.

The three went ashore, again saluted by the policeman, and strolled casually towards the town.

‘Late as usual. Why can’t this damned country do anything on time?’ the officer complained.

He did not hurry and the other two kept to his pace. It would have been inconceivable for the harbour police to think that the distant shouts were meant to alert them as the inspector and his assistants strolled so casually to a waiting car. They circled around fish vans and into the car-park. Cap, uniform coat and neat beard were swiftly discarded. We were transformed into three respectable, shirt-sleeved civilians plus one dirt-stained labourer – me. The smart naval lieutenant turned out to be Felipe Montes, the polite and dashing polo player who had interrogated me in London. On the face of it, all appeared so simple; but one must not consider the populace of Puerto Santa Maria as law-abiding and ready to expose a criminal. The sympathies of at least half of the labouring classes of the capital were against Heredia and, given any sort of chance, formed an unorganised conspiracy of silence. More they dared not offer.

We stopped and parked in a space left empty, then walked a little way to a line of cars crammed so closely together against the wall that it seemed nearly impossible to extract one without knocking some paint off its neighbour. Felipe put two pads under the knees of his trousers and crawled under a caravan. At the touch of a switch or button, the floor slid back revealing a flight of narrow steps, which led down to what, at first sight, appeared to be the floor of a nightclub.

‘Simple really,’ Felipe explained, switching to his English, faultless except for the accent. ‘It was a nightclub, and when Heredia closed it down we converted it into two dormitories, one for men and another for women. All we have to do is change the caravan which closes the entrance every three or four days. It would make a perfect club for active Retadores if we did not have to take extreme care in leaving or entering. There is always a sentry up top to signal when the coast is clear. And if it isn’t clear, all that can be seen is a chap emerging from doing a job under the bonnet.’

‘Teresa Molinos is here?’

‘No. But safe, I hope. She has told me everything up to handing over the Punchao to you.’

‘And now it is yours if you can get away with it.’

‘That should not be difficult,’ he said. ‘McMurtrie can re-open the excavations.’

‘McMurtrie would hand it straight to Heredia or his wife and take a reward. You must go in force to be sure of capturing it and getting clear.’

‘This fellow, Pepe, knows where it is?’

‘He might guess, but I doubt it. Tell me honestly – after such a defeat have you any chance of overthrowing Heredia?’

‘Not unless one of his generals revolts. And none of them will while success is so uncertain. His army fought well by what you tell me.’

‘Can I see Teresa?’

‘Forgive me if I do not tell you where she is. If Heredia gets his hands on you or her, you will have told him everything you know by the time he lets you die.’

‘Cheerful! Forgive me, but for the same reason I have not told you where the Punchao is – not in McMurtrie’s excavations, I assure you.’

‘But will you lead us to it?’

‘Of course. Then my duty is over.’

‘Well, a bath, clean clothes and then a long night’s rest. Meanwhile I shall call a council of war.’

‘You command here?’

‘Yes. And possibly everywhere. I think our former commander has bolted over the frontier.’

‘You will take the presidency if Heredia is forced to resign?’

‘Not if I can help it. I am not fit for such power. I should get out of hand. You remember doubtless when I turned the Second Murderer on to you. I was as bad as Heredia. Honestly I thanked God when you got away.’

‘And he?’

‘Good as new after a week in hospital patched up.’

Chapter Eight

It was luxury to sleep secure with no necessity to wake every hour and listen, and more luxury still to dream in clean clothes. When I got up – they had been careful to let me sleep – the council of war was over, but a dozen of them remained round the table and very courteously rose to greet me as I walked into the central hall which, I swear, still held the tenuous ghost of the perfumes of the sweating chorus. This council of the revolution let me eat my breakfast in peace and then Felipe Montes said that there was one point which it was essential for a raiding party to know: was the Punchao hidden in the forest or buried in the open?

‘Near the edge of thickest forest,’ I replied, ‘and you will need a light ladder. While you are at work you cannot be seen from anywhere. The danger will be when the party is escaping with the Punchao. I don’t know if there are any posts of Heredistas covering the edge of the forest, but there could be. Sir Hector’s former camp may be under suspicion and the Punchao is only about half a kilometre from there.’

They were so obsessed by the tactics of recovering the Punchao that they had not considered the difficulty of holding it. Back it would go into darkness when it should be flashing its message of peace to all Malpelo. Well, until the Retadores entered the capital in triumph, the Punchao was safer where it was than anywhere else. That moment of triumph was, on the face of it, very far away, for after so crushing a defeat, the struggle would be long until Heredia was overthrown.

I asked if I were entitled to speak to the council and was encouraged to go ahead.

‘Why not leave the Punchao where it is, safe from Heredia?’ I asked. ‘I will tell you where it is hidden, will show it to you if you wish. Then forget it till your last victorious battle. I can imagine it being carried to the palace through the streets of Santa Maria by – well, why not Teresa Molinos?’

‘If we can see it and be sure that it is safe, you could be right,’ Felipe said.

‘But without the Punchao we cannot raise another army,’ one of them objected.

‘Why not? The people are with us and each one of us can raise a force in his own province.’

‘Arms?’

‘We have enough. Look at the raid which won back the Punchao. We only need artillery and we can buy that from the Russians. We shall have no difficulty in persuading them that we are revolting against a dictatorship of the Right.’

‘Let us see the Punchao and then decide!’

They all agreed, but hated the idea of leaving the Punchao in the darkness of the trees with an aged vulture as its only guardian. So did I.

I remained underground in the car-park. Meanwhile, a chosen party slipped out singly or in pairs across the road bridge to Nueva Beria with the usual filthy and indecipherable papers. I came last with Felipe, both stinking of cheap spirits and incontinence. The police post was only too glad to let us through.

The country between Hector’s first camp and the edge of the forest we found to be loosely patrolled by the army. At one point the beat of the piquet appeared to pass within a hundred yards of Donna’s old den, but they had no interest in the Punchao, only in the approaches to Nueva Beria. Heredia’s intelligence could give him only one certainty: that the Punchao had vanished from the battlefield and was either with me or still with Teresa.

That thought led me to another. I appreciated the extreme security with which Felipe had surrounded her, but now I held the whip hand.

‘Before I show you the Punchao,’ I said, ‘you must tell me where Teresa Molinos is.’

‘Man, I do not want to put you both in danger.’

‘But there is no reason why, if I am captured, it should lead to her.’

‘I do not think, dear comrade, that as a fortunate Englishman you have any experience of torture.’

‘As you will, then, but give me your word of honour that she is as safe as she can be.’

‘I give you my word of honour. She is the treasure of the Retadores and every one of us would willingly die in her service.’

It was not that somewhat exaggerated Latin rhetoric which impressed me but his fear that I might break under torture. He could be right. I had no means of telling.

‘Then come with me!’

They had not brought the ladder. It could have meant too much explanation to the police post on the bridge. So remembering my escape on Richmond Green I asked the tallest of them to support himself against the tree trunk while I clambered on to his shoulders, and then up by way of the first little branch. Even so, access to the nest was a good deal safer than my former monkey act and I brought down the Punchao still wrapped among dead leaves which showed flashes of bright gold set in the green and black.

How the devil I was to get it to the ground intact was a puzzle, for I had nothing now in which I could wrap it and my hands were fully occupied. I solved the problem by taking off all my clothes and making a rope of them; once on the ground it seemed to me curiously right that I should be stark naked: the priest’s tribute to the sacred symbol. My companions remained oddly silent, and I suspect that they too felt something of the sort.

The question now was whether to put it back in the charge of the vulture or to take it with us. I was in favour of taking it with us since twigs and leaves were no longer as secure as they had been, and there were double the number of footprints around the tree. So the Punchao, now again a wanderer, returned to the vagabond home upon my chest. Where else were we to put it? The security of the car-park could not be trusted. Any hiding place in the trees was desperately uncertain. A safe house was the only answer – not impossible, Felipe thought, but the risks of transport, of police searches, of accident were too dangerous. Donna’s ‘small estate’ was close by, but as soon as there were any indication that it might have contained the Punchao as well as the guard dog, it would be stripped above and below the surface.

So we started on our way back to get clear of the vital area without as yet any clear idea of where we were bound. It was always the frontier which attracted us, in spite of the risk that our neighbours across the border might return the Punchao to Heredia as state property.

Dreams, all dreams! Any competent detective would be able to tell from the tracks that something had been moved into or out of the tree and that six men had been engaged. To this day I don’t know what happened. The police on the bridge must have had second thoughts about the six peasants who came across separately instead of rolling over as one single body of noisy drunks and passed on the advice to detain and question any of these who had not yet reached his stated home. Again we had underrated Heredia’s secret police.

The first sign that all was not well was that the piquet had been increased to three men and had been moved to the edge of the forest where they were examining the footprints on the ground. We got away in the twilight by circling Donna’s former paddock and on to the well-beaten track to Ramales. That wretched village had to be avoided so we aimed for the bridge over which the all-conquering tanks had come. There were a couple of sentries on that too, posing still another question: Did the Civil Guard know that they were on the track of the Punchao or not? I thought they did not; they were still after stragglers from the defeated Retadores. I was wrong.

It was neither stragglers nor the Punchao they were after. It was me. I was known to have got away from Ramales with the Punchao and Teresa. The chap whose importunate bowels had fooled the guard on the bridge at Puerto Santa Maria was probably me. And there was some evidence that I had fallen in with the equally dangerous Felipe Montes.

Felipe and I cleared out of the immediate district with the Punchao, leaving the other four to find their own way to the car-park or the frontier. I thought of taking refuge with the curandera but that would have put both Pepe and her at risk. The only other place I knew where we could rest in peace and discuss future plans was the old cave on the way to Ramales.

Very cautiously, we approached it with Felipe leading. He had just time to scream half a warning when there was a blinding flash of light from the interior and he dropped in a hale of fire. To go back to the entrance was certain death so I dived for the narrow passage at the back of the cave where we had stabled the horse and never explored more deeply.

As the light was still focused on Felipe’s shattered body I had a fraction of a second to get behind the remains of a smooth, upright boulder beyond which the passage carried on. Flakes and chips of stone formed a screen to my left but none of them struck me for I was protected from the line of fire. One of my assailants walked forward to pick up my body and received two rounds of my machine-pistol at close range. In their astonishment at anybody being still alive in the passage they ceased fire for a moment which gave me time – so far as time existed at all – to extend my right arm and shoot out their light. Another score for my African Father of his Country; he may have turned me into a thief, but he did give me an education in self-defence. My resentment of his treatment of me faded away for good.

Before they could plaster the darkness from a spare battery, I found that I had splashed into a pool and was behind a rock fall from the roof. Beyond it was a narrow strip of grey – well, optimism could almost call it grey. I splashed towards it and saw the vague outline of a tree. Deciding that I was justifiably at war I waited for them, bagged at least two and shot out their light again. They left the tunnel after that, or perhaps there were no more of them.

I found myself on the hillside faintly lit by a quarter-moon. The golden chain of the Punchao was remarkably strong, hanging round my neck like an insistent, importunate friend whom you wish was at the bottom of the sea but cannot shake off. There on the grassy slope above the peacefully running streamlet I took it off. It looked at me even in that ghostly light through its golden disks, claiming to be immortal.

‘You wouldn’t bloody well have been immortal if I had not been lying on you,’ I said aloud.

‘And if my cousin the moon had not helped us both,’ it seemed to answer.

I put it back with grudging thanks and stood up to have a look round the hillside. Below me all was black. Ahead of me, the silver stream had trickled along its miniature valley until it formed a pool which overflowed when the water was high enough. The only possible route to follow was back towards its source which must lie in the tableland high above Ramales. But then a better idea occurred to me: to follow the stream down in the darkness to its junction with the river, which should not be far from the bridge over which the tanks had launched their surprise attack. Or why not march even further and put the Punchao back in a home which it knew, behind the veil of white water at the fall to the sea? Easy to find. And if I were no longer available Teresa would know the exact spot – if, that is, Teresa’s refuge could be known.

So dawn discovered us – me and the Punchao – well to the south of Ramales and nearly half-way to the beach where we had hidden from the Heredistas behind the waterfall. The forest was now cut from the tracks of the two armies moving up to the northern frontier and progress could be fast. It was most unlikely that the search for the Punchao would be directed at the fall when Heredia knew that it had been present at the main battle and the mutiny.

‘You’ll be pretty comfortable there,’ I told the Punchao.

I had got into the habit of talking to it as the most important member of the party. I think the discharge of so many firearms in a closed space had affected my hearing and, slightly, my reason.

I need not go into all the narrow escapes and mistaken paths which accounted for three full days and nights until I heard the moaning of the sea followed by many anxious hours of pure boy-scouting while I explored the two headlands which surrounded the beach to make sure that there would be no woman and child still searching for their beloved dead. When I was satisfied that I was alone, I crept under the waterfall and replaced the Punchao in its former hole, covering it with gravel.

And now for Teresa. That she was not already over the frontier was certain, for there would be then no reason for the secrecy of her message; nor was she in the capital – fairly safe if she was still dressed as a boy and among friends who could be trusted. I could not envisage Teresa bearing inaction with patience. It would be useless to cage her in a position bounded by nothingness from breakfast to bed. On the other hand, she was not one for the forest and a tent or sleeping bag unless it was in some way a command post.

Somewhere in remote country there must be the nucleus of a future government and she had been trusting to Felipe to put me in touch with it; the message of ‘polo’ was meant to give me a hint. It did not. Some of the temporary inhabitants of the car-park would undoubtedly be Felipe’s collaborators, but if he would not answer questions they certainly would not. Polo. The message was too vague for me to understand. Perhaps I might if I knew more of Malpelo and its landowners who appeared to be lying low in their estates or safely abroad in Paris.

Another point. I could not help her and any enquiries – for example, as a Spaniard looking for a job as a groom – might very well lead Heredia’s police to her. It was not for nothing that Felipe had refused to tell me where she was until it was too late. For all I knew, she might be thankful that I was dead.

I could add that cheerful thought to all the others. I was without food and without a friend, in much the same position as I had been in London except that I still had some money, but it could not buy my life or hers. I was at the end of the road which had started with a black bag in Harrods.

There was only one course open to me: to forget the lot of them and go home. Not so easy as it had been. My clothes were filthy rags and I should have to buy more before entering the National Bank to draw out the remainder of my money and then to buy a ticket from Malpelo to London. Passport? I still had it but I reckoned that its validity would be about five minutes. The protection of the British Consul-General? Not very likely for a man notorious for having fought against the legal government. No, my only hope was with the Retadores if I could find a commander who knew enough of my story to believe me.

I set off for Santa Maria, approaching the capital by the main road after fording the river. In the suburbs I saw occasional faces which I recognised but none gave me more than a glance, so I reckoned that I could safely order breakfast if the place was sufficiently grubby. The sole proprietor, when presenting the bill, asked me if I were a Spaniard and I answered that I had come from Spain four years ago and stayed on because I liked Malpelo. Yes, there were not so many police about then, he said – a perfectly casual remark, but I took it as a kindly warning that even in this simplest of joints a derelict such as I might be asked to show his papers. Back on the street, I cursed Heredia again for turning this little heaven into a hell.

I slunk down to the port and its car-park and after some delay was admitted. I was shocked to find that I was not easily identified without Felipe to vouch for me, and kept apart until someone who had been present at the council of war recognised me from my Spanish accent in spite of my filthy, matted beard and torn clothes. When I told them the manner of Felipe’s death some of them wept. He had been a natural leader and much loved.

I insisted on leaving them as soon as possible, for the rest of our party had not returned. I do not know whether they ever did or had been captured and shot. Meanwhile, I was given a luxurious bath which went a long way to restoring morale. My shirt and trousers were roughly mended, enough to preserve decency, and my beard trimmed so far as to remain in keeping with my rags. Then I ate enormously and slept the sleep of the half-drunk till late in the morning.

They begged me to stay with them, but I refused for fear of being recognised and compromising the safety of their hide-out. So I left the car-park when the coast was clear with enough food to keep me going until I was far enough from Santa Maria to enter a shop with comparative safety and spend some of the money which they lent me. They told me to aim for the wild south-eastern tip of Malpelo where the Retadores were in some force carrying on a mild tip-and-run guerrilla warfare too harmless to call for a full punitive expedition, though probably next on Heredia’s list.

I was soon clear of the docks and their suburbs and set out for the east in good heart with my forged papers. They were inspected at the last post outside the town while I tried to hide my anxiety. It was needless, giving me confidence that the experts at the car-park knew their jobs. Then came the long trudge to the east. Faces on the road and in the little villages turned from the deep sunburn of the tropical Spaniard to the reddish brown of the Indian and the greyish black of the mestizos. All wished me good luck and good day, knowing that a poor man walking alone, had need of both, and preserving the good manners which Spain had left behind.

When night fell I found a little ruin of a shed and slept. Twenty-five miles were behind me and I had completely recovered from my depression. Central America had charm. To judge by Malpelo, it had been a happier little state under the presidents whose portraits filled Heredia’s ante-room. The Spaniard was and remained the conquerer, but a Christian and therefore cordial conquerer. What had democracy and its politicians added to the general tolerance? Nothing until the arrival of industry had given birth to a proletariat.

In the morning I set out again for the east. The country had become primeval and I could see that it would be a base for a formidable guerrilla stronghold though there was little sign of it beyond the police posts which seemed to have been recently and lightly fortified. I thought it perfectly safe to eat and drink at a fonda just outside the last houses and so preserve my bag of supplies for an emergency. Another traveller joined me on the bench and began to question me. I had given him my usual story of being a Spaniard who had settled down in Malpelo, saying, to avoid giving a definite address, that I was a fisherman working out of Santa Maria and on my way home. He led me into details of where I lived and only then did I realise that his questions were more than friendly curiosity; so I paid my bill, walked out of the fonda and made the appalling mistake of walking briskly and purposefully east instead of west to Santa Maria which I had given as my destination.

‘Come with me!’ he said, catching me up. ‘We have a cart going to Santa Maria this afternoon and it can give you a lift if you have a chat with my officer first.’

I thanked him enthusiastically. I think he had no idea that I had spotted him as a plain-clothes cop. His patter was good, but he wasn’t very bright.

The cart was standing outside the police station. The horse – well, it was a horse and that was about all one could say for it. The plain-clothes cop, who had now smilingly given up the pretence of being anything else, went inside to telephone. I cut the traces and galloped away. He had not been telephoning at all, for he jumped out of the office and fired a couple of shots from an antique revolver. I left the road for open fields and was relieved to find that the horse could at any rate jump a ditch on the way back to its pasture and that, on the whole, it preferred the open to pulling a trap. I was now beyond overtaking but a marked man wherever I rode.

I gave up any idea of searching for Teresa if – doubtful anyway – she had taken refuge with some scattered band of Retadores. For the first time, I realised that it was her I wanted rather than safety. I dismissed the thought. But what else was there? I was in the midst of a country of which I knew only a very limited strip where every man would be against me or afraid to contact me unless he was above suspicion. Above suspicion – well, that suggested Hector. Undoubtedly he could help, but how? The most he could do was to hand over the Punchao to his father-in-law in return for my life. Forget Teresa!

Now this policeman? What would he report? That I had said I was bound for Santa Maria and yet had turned the other way as if to join the guerrillas of the Retadores. An obvious case for investigation that was, made more obvious still by stealing the horse standing ready to convey the local chief constable to the capital. The whole pack of hounds would be after me with strict orders to bring me before Heredia in person. Well then, I would return to the capital – a very faint hope. They did not seem to make much use of horses any longer, using cars on the road and their feet on the rough stuff. But this was mere guesswork.

Under cover of the first hillock with a good view of the road, I spotted a man lying comfortably on the grass in a sort of nest formed by long and frequent use. He was smoking a pipe. It was the first I had seen in Malpelo where the populace smoked cigars if poor and cigarettes if poorer. By his side was a .303 rifle of old vintage but spotlessly clean. He had evidently been there for some time.

‘And where are you off to?’ he asked in English with no sign of surprise at my sudden appearance.

‘No comprendo.’

‘Well, now – he doesn’t understand English! Yet he is wearing a suit which was once made in London. Much patched, of course. It looks to me as if you need some help. Where are you going?’

‘The sea,’ I told him, giving up the useless pretence, ‘or as near as I can get.’

‘Ah, that explains the horse. He doesn’t look the kind which could possibly break his traces. I was just out for my usual evening stroll when I saw some excitement at the police station. I gathered that a horse had broken away from the chief’s buggy. I also heard two shots. So putting two and two together I gathered that someone had been in danger of arrest. It’s surprising how much one can pick up in an hour’s watching of the traffic and a few questions afterwards. By the way, do you really need that horse or can you lend it to me?’

‘Lend it or give it?’ I replied with my eye on the rifle.

‘As you like. You seem to have stirred up the ants around here. I have stayed too long to satisfy my curiosity about you, and now I should like to get away while the going is good. Do you think it would carry us both?’

‘Over this ground?’

‘If you come up a bit, you will see that there is a track. Or rather you won’t see there is a track because it is only twenty inches wide.’

I mounted behind him without any objection from the horse which asked nothing better than to take the narrow, worn path which he was expected to follow.

‘This is the only direct road to the rest of Malpelo,’ he told me. ‘It is seldom used, only if we need some reliable chap to get the news in an emergency.’

‘May I know your name?’

‘Mayne. Joseph Mayne. And yours?’

I told him and he said that he had heard of me.

‘Our link with civilisation,’ he explained, ‘runs to the Atlantic and three different systems of government – imitation Russian, imitation USA and perfectly good democracy, all quite easy to accept so long as you know what the next one is going to be and pay your taxes without bothering about corruption. All politicians have to live.’

The sun was already low and we could now see in the distance miniature colonies of little white houses straggling over the lowlands, interspersed with small warehouses and factories. Lights began to twinkle. Obviously there was no electricity.

‘But who did this?’

‘I did, and called it Jumilla.’

‘Why don’t you build on?’

‘Because it is more profitable not to. The House of Representatives voted the money and then – shall we say – forgot about it.’

‘You are not tempted to be – well, up to date?’

‘We are up to date. Say, 1850. I chose the site. I knew as soon as I saw it that this was where I wanted to live. The old game. My father made the money and I spent it.’

‘You are not lonely?’

Three quite adorable little Indians were hovering in welcome outside the door of a long, low white house a little bigger than the rest.

‘My daughters,’ he announced, rather to my surprise for their manners were perfect in Spanish and English. I said that he had made his house a palace.

‘How did you ever find a governess?’

‘The Presidenta Juana has been good enough to take an interest in them. No, not what you think. All different mothers. But she often telephones them when the boss is away.’

He kissed all three and led me into the house, telling me with Spanish courtesy that it was mine.

‘Wine or our local shot-in-the-arm?’ he asked.

‘Whichever you recommend after a hard day. And the horse? He needs a drink too.’

‘Poor old police horse! He can’t show his face until I have changed his colour. He now belongs to the people as you don’t want him.’

‘You are communists?’

‘Yes, I suppose so. On a very small scale the system works. So if I must have a name, that’s about it. You are talking to the ghost of Uncle Stalin himself.’

‘Don’t the police ever come here?’

‘Yes. After giving me notice.’

‘Are they reasonable?’

‘Only quite a small subvention monthly if the Treasury hasn’t spent it. But there are limits. They would not disobey if there is a direct order from the President. Is he likely to give it?’

‘I am afraid he is.’

‘Then I shall have to set you on your way in the morning. I will let Juana know.’

‘For God’s sake, no!’

‘Well, if you think so. But she finds me very romantic. We’ll keep that in reserve then.’

I started my story with the raid of the Retadores on the capital and the capture of the Punchao from the watchmaker, for I was still too ashamed of London and my theft of the black bag. I told him how I had rescued it and had intended to carry it to the commander of the Retadores in the second battle. After the defeat I escaped with it and I would, I said, show it to him when the time came. It was the property of the people, not Heredia.

‘What are you doing in Malpelo anyway?’

‘I came over as a friend of Sir Hector McMurtrie.’

‘And of Carlota?’

‘I think she would gladly see me stuck up against a wall.’

‘And where does Teresa Molinos come in? I have three stories about her: (1) she brought the Punchao up from the bottom of the sea; (2) she nearly caused a revolution by walking with it into the rearguard of the Heredistas; (3) she is protected by an enormous witch dog.’

I told him that Rumour No. 2 was correct and the other two were fairy stories – but important since they showed the legends which attached themselves to the Punchao.

‘Do you know where she is now?’

‘I wish I did.’

‘Yes. If it had been a man who held up the Punchao they would have rallied round it. Evidence of power without cruelty is what they want to see.’

Chapter Nine

I left him on foot early in the morning, heading for the Atlantic coast, a long way to walk but the road was good. The colony was part of Malpelo, but so isolated that there was no through traffic. After a rather nervous march I was stopped by a lorry with a load of bananas on its way to the port. The driver told me to get in quickly and promptly hid me in an empty crate of Canary bananas, left over from some experimental shipment. I had nothing to fear, he said, when he nailed me down.

We bumped along the gravelled road for about an hour and a half until I could hear the distant hoot of a ship. Soon afterwards another crate – rather to my alarm – was stacked on top of me. Then the driver appeared to be counting the shipment in the presence of some official, and the side of my crate dropped down, leaving just enough space for me to crawl out.

‘There you are!’ the driver said. ‘Don’t move until the ship is well out to sea. Then ask for the third officer! Good luck, comrade!’

I moved too early and only realised it when I tried to get back into hiding and couldn’t. That left my backside wide open to a hearty kick.

‘Damn communist! Out you go!’

‘Hi, there! I am British.’

‘You should be ashamed of yourself with that nice queen of yours. Chuck him out!’

At least they did me the honour of lowering the gangplank. I had just time to tell them what they could do with their bananas before I was manhandled to the immigration office.

‘Pasaporte, por favor.’

I showed it.

‘Here’s the chap you want,’ the officer shouted over his shoulder.

Two military policemen jumped from a lightly armoured van behind him, flung me down on the floor and set off on the long way round to the capital through Nueva Beria avoiding Jumilla altogether. They unloaded me at the central police station, from which I had been delivered by the raid of the Retadores.

‘The President will see your prisoner immediately,’ the duty officer said.

So I was taken at once to the palace and locked into a sound-proof room. There were a couple of unfamiliar machines in it which I did not like. I was left alone for half an hour, probably to soften me for questioning. It did. I had heard enough of Heredia’s methods.

The President at last came in accompanied by a silent assistant. He appeared to be as cordial as the first time that I had been summoned to his presence.

‘Well, well, Mr Hawkins, and what were you running away from?’

‘I want to go home, Your Excellency.’

‘You believed I would not let you?’

‘Well, there have been misunderstandings. I admit I have been mixed up with some strange people against my will and in ignorance of Malpelo’s politics, Excellency.’

‘I am told you are a communist.’

‘I have no politics. I am an archaeologist.’

‘Ah, that would account for your interest in the Punchao. Then no doubt you can tell me where it has disappeared to since the Senorita Molinos paraded with it through Ramales.’

‘I do not know, Excellency.’

I was not going to give him the obvious answer that she had it when I could not know whether she was safely out of reach.

‘You mean that you do not remember, I think. I wonder if I can restore your memory.’

He gave a nod to his silent companion who stepped forward, bent back my arms and pinioned them behind my head.

‘A cigar?’ Heredia invited – a gratuitous touch of cruelty.

His torturer set up one of those unfamiliar machines which I had seen, and attached rings to my wrists and ankles. He then wound a wheel so that I was suspended in mid-air. I let out a squeal at the savage pain and fiercely determined not to do so again. I flatter myself that I kept the vow but I cannot be sure.

The companion answered my silence by a touch more on the wheel, leaving my body in a straight line of agony which increased from moment to moment.

‘And how is the memory now?’ Heredia asked.

‘I cannot remember what I do not know.’

‘Perhaps another centimetre will improve his knowledge,’ Heredia suggested to the professional.

I heard my shoulder crack as it was dislocated. I was thankful for the cooling sweat which burst out all over me.

‘Are you perhaps now able to tell me where you hid the Punchao?’

I think I answered that I did not hide it. I must have said something. I am even vague by now which language we were speaking.

‘Why have we kept his clothes on all this time, my much appreciated specialist?’

The specialist slit my two garments and ripped them off. That was in a way the worst. It exaggerated my feeling of utter defencelessness. Also the act of tearing the clothes from a body stretched like an iron bar was added agony. Somehow, I found enough pain or exasperation or whatever it was to stammer in English:

‘You bloody swine!’

‘Well, well! Now that reminds me! I have heard that swine will eat a man little by little.’

The much appreciated assistant handed him a pair of wide pincers. He began to pluck slowly at bunches of my body hairs with his own hands.

‘Unless my memory is at fault there won’t be much left for your little Teresa.’

Oddly enough, the mention of her name reinforced my determination to resist. At any rate the assistant had some reason to heave a bucket of cold water over me. I blame my big toe on which he had just started to work, not Teresa.

A telephone rang and Heredia calmly answered it.

‘Patch him up,’ he ordered. ‘We will continue tomorrow.’

‘Shall I tighten?’

‘No. The pain will grow fiercer through the night without any help from us.’

‘But Your Excellency does not wish him to die?’

‘On no account, chico! On no account!’

They left me tied up, with only my bottom supported. Heredia was right. The pain did grow fiercer.

The pair returned late in the morning. Their first act was to screw up the wheel and straighten me. That may have been an experiment. If so, it was successful. That was the worst agony of the lot.

‘Now it’s a lovely morning outside,’ Heredia said. ‘Just the time to tell me where the Punchao is.’

‘Where you won’t get it,’ I think I said.

Looking back on that hell, I am not amazed at my courage; indeed I am not sure that it existed. By this time I had no will left. I was a tortured parrot and my response was no more than my training in the cage. I don’t know if I even had the sense to see that he could not let me die before I told him. I wished to God that he would let me die.

The assistant repeated his attention to my big toe. He had torn off the nail the previous night but had not severed the joint. He now began to twist it off, not in one merciful jerk but in a series of turns and returns.

The telephone buzzed and the President picked it up himself. He had to be careful that this ultra-private office should remain only a rumour to terrify opponents. It was obviously not the first time that his private pleasures had been interrupted.

‘Escort the caller to the door of my personal office. Knock twice and retire at once,’ he said.

The professional lowered two wooden screens cutting off a third of the room where I lay, heaving a rug over the bloodstains on the floor and converting the torture chamber into a private office with books, files, chairs and a table. He retired behind the false walls, shoved a gag in my mouth and knocked out a tooth for good measure.

It was his daughter, Lady McMurtrie, who entered.

‘God, what a stink!’ she exclaimed. ‘How ever can you work in here?’

(To increase the feeling of hopeless degradation, the prisoner had been given no receptacle for his dung.)

I am sorry, my dear,’ he replied. ‘I had a touch of dysentery this morning, and I was not expecting any visitors.’

‘Mamma said that she had news that you had captured that criminal Hawkins. She didn’t know whether it was true or not but thought you should be told.’

‘I have captured him, but whether he will talk is of course a matter for the judiciary. Who the devil has been feeding your mother up with such stories?’

‘I don’t know. But the call came all the way round from Jumilla this morning. She managed to worry herself about it and thought you should too. It was probably one of those girls who phoned.’

‘Well, tell Juana there is nothing to worry about and that I cannot appear in public this morning.’

‘Any news of the Punchao?’

‘No. But we shall get it. Where is Hector?’

‘I don’t know. He was away last night and hasn’t come back yet.’

I cannot remember whether they were speaking English or Spanish. I do remember that the mention of Jumilla called up a vision of peace. Hector – what had he to do with this shrinking jelly of flesh? Something. I could not clearly remember what. Hadn’t he told me that, up to a point, I could count on him? What point?

But hope, or something resembling hope, began for the crippled parrot. It was obvious that someone – presumably the driver of the banana truck – had raced back to Jumilla from the port and that one of Mayne’s girls had telephoned Juana who did not know what to do about the message and had appealed to her unsympathetic daughter to ask the boss. God, they were all muddled in my mind! What orders had the truck driver received from Mayne? Presumably to hurry back to Jumilla with the news of what had happened at the port. With or without orders, one of the little mestiza beauties putting on a show of sweet innocence had telephoned kind auntie Juana with the news. Almost at once Hector had got hold of it, had borrowed a presidential car and driven hell for leather to Jumilla through the night. That was as far as I could muddle my way.

Somebody knew. Something must turn up. They all believed that torture would break me and that the Punchao would become the swastika of Malpelo. My fate was in my own hands, for I could not be allowed to die until I confessed the hiding place of the Punchao. After that was confirmed, I should be allowed to go home by sea where a regrettable accident would be so much easier to arrange.

As soon as I heard Carlota leave her father and the professional had restored the room to its original appearance of a quiet study with a peaceful view of the sea, the roots of the toe were efficiently bandaged and I was put back in my agonising overnight position. In the distance I heard bugles sounding the stand-to and the roar of trucks starting and taking position on the far side of the palace. The sounds were evidence that somewhere there was life and in my efforts to translate them I must have lost consciousness.

The door was smashed down. The confidential guard lay dead from silent cold steel. I was cut loose and lifted to the President’s yacht, laid in the President’s stateroom and given first aid by (I presume) a horrified surgeon of the Retadores. We were out to sea within ten minutes of the rescue. Recognising their faces, I could see that we were partly manned by refugees from the car-park, who had taken the opportunity to get clear away. Half the normal crew who were naturally on the side of their employer were thrown overboard; the rest stuck to their normal duties.

Mayne appeared at my bedside and told me to sleep and have absolute trust.

‘But the navy will catch you.’

‘The navy is under the impression that the President is on board. His flag is flying.’

‘Where is he?’

‘Going round to Jumilla by land.’

‘But your people?’

I was appalled by the thought of the peaceful little city being raped by Heredia’s troops.

‘Don’t bother. He will have turned back before he gets there. He will have got the news, but he will not be sure yet that I am the enemy. He knows I have no troops.’

‘But you will all be slaughtered for my sake.’

‘Don’t you believe it! He has already driven the cowards over the frontier, but the rest of us remain in arms. Have you forgotten Teresa?’

‘Is she alive?’

‘Alive and marching west. Look straight ahead of you out of the window and you will see our standard at the fore.’

I could make out a round object like a red football.

‘That, my Hawkins, is the head of your torturer.’

Chapter Ten

It took me some days to resume the normal shape and mentality of a human being. I expected to be shot out of the water as soon as the navy could call up the hands who were on shore, get steam up and give chase. But Mayne had been cunning; he had set out from Jumilla on horseback with a dozen heavily armed communist guards, picked up a truck where he hit the main road, frightened the life out of the villagers and driven straight for Puerto Santa Maria while Heredia and the garrison were on their way to Jumilla by the long route. He had then stormed the palace, unproteced except for the servants huddled in the basement, and hijacked the President’s motor yacht. There were only two frigates in the port and both had been immobilised by limpet mines, so that we had a start of at least two hours. A false crew had come racing out from the car-park and blown the coast road behind us. The yacht was now hard aground on the edge of the forest. I was lifted carefully ashore as the only person on board or anywhere else who knew the hiding place of the Punchao.

Mayne, pouring sweat, now found time to see me.

‘And how’s that for the efficient organisation of the working class?’ he said proudly.

‘Working class, my arse!’

‘I see you are getting better.’

‘What about the Malpelo airforce?’

‘When they can get into the air they will knock down a lot of trees and report that we are decimated. The trouble is: can we mobilise our supporters in time? Heredia will be back home by now and he is a good general. What shall I deal with first?’

‘To judge by what I have seen in the villages the south will come over to you as soon as they see that you have the power to win.’

‘That means the Punchao,’ he said. ‘Will you give it to me?’

‘On condition it remains in Teresa Molinos’ keeping. Yes.’

‘Good Lord! You don’t want her stuck with it for life, do you?’

‘All right, then my condition is that it returns to the museum with a guard of honour. Where is Sir Hector?’

‘Ridden off to collect a cook, his dog and the local witch. He thought they might know a bit more than any of the rest of us.’

That was a sound move of Hector’s when he could not know how much of me was still alive.

Mayne was quite right about the airforce of Malpelo. While I was still barely conscious they had bombed the hell out of the forest, set stands of trees on fire, knocked another hole in the presidential yacht, but never discovered our tiny expeditionary force. All through this deadly little guerrilla action, the enemy had been some twenty minutes behind us.

Hector, throughout his ride, had given completely false information to police and the Heredista garrisons. According to him, he was galloping to protect his archaeological excavations from the uncaring, barbarous attentions of the Retadores. He was believed. The trenches and pits which his labourers had dug had in fact no purpose whatever and were consequently a mystery of state.

He had run into Pepe in the curandera’s garden outside Ramales where Pepe was practising walking. Donna immediately attacked and was called off by Pepe who put matters right by removing his hat and bowing to his former employer. The curandera emerged into the light from her underground kitchen dressed in her impressive black. Hector utterly failed to persuade her to accompany him. If there were again to be war, she would, she said, stay where she was to care for any man who needed her.

When Hector and Pepe returned with Donna the scene was emotional and not only for Donna. She put her great paw on my chest as if to hold me down and licked my face and my dislocated shoulders with little moans like those of a mother returning to her missing child. Pepe and the surgeon stood by amazed; if not gently prevented she would have had all the bandages off. Except for the missing toe, her treatment, for all I know, may have been right.

To judge by the scrappy news which Hector brought back, Heredia, after calling in his garrisons from the frontier, did not know where to strike. His one outstanding victory did not seem to have crushed the longings of his people, nor could he readily believe that so much damage could have been done – though only to his palace and his yacht – by apparently so few. Instead of mopping up the small band of Retadores, he wasted time in reorganising his forces to meet and exterminate the untrained guerrillas on the march from the south-west. As soon as we had a somewhat imaginary picture of their strength and speed, Mayne, who had assumed command without question, detached a miniature force to pick up the Punchao with orders to avoid all risks until reunited with the main body. We hoped that by that time it could be called a main body and not a mere peasants’ revolt.

I still could not ride or march and was provided with a basket chair from the President’s yacht quickly fitted on to a couple of rollers which, I hoped, could not upset. It did upset twice on the steep slopes as we moved nearer and nearer to the coast, the waterfall and the lightly buried Punchao.

We were completely isolated, for Heredia had cut the telephone lines to the east of the capital. Hector had not been arrested and questioned on his return from his dig as he was known to the enemy officers as the President’s son-in-law and it was naturally assumed that he was holding some position on his staff. Mayne at once saw how that could be useful and left Hector behind in nominal command – though he knew nothing of guerrilla or any other kind of warfare – while Pepe and Donna with a small party of his own men and me in my basket chair set off to recover the Punchao. That could be done in a couple of days of hard riding, but it was impossible to estimate how long the journey would take if we did not succeed in avoiding patrols and had to move by night. The beach had only the single road to it, so little used that it was half a mile wrong on the map. We took with us two machine-guns from the presidential yacht leaving Hector with rifles and injunctions not to move from his position unless it became essential to split the party and take refuge in thick cover.

We met no opposition until the two hills which framed the beach were in sight. Very cautious reconnaissance showed that there was a heavily armed section on the beach, probably awaiting the arrival of stores or reinforcements. An approach by night was impossible. Footsteps on loose pebbles would almost certainly be heard above the regular splashing of the fall and so would our retreat with the Punchao.

‘What do we do now?’ I asked Mayne.

‘Simple!’ he replied. ‘We stage a mock battle. One of our two guns looses off from the top of the slope, and the other answers from near the top of the fall. If they haven’t got a gun there, they ought to have. But maybe they (I mean, we) will only reply with rifle fire. The signal for you to go in, basket chair and all, will be when snipers join in and the Heredistas on the beach charge up the hill. How long will it take to dig up the Punchao?’

‘It’s down little more than a foot.’

‘Then say a minute if anyone has a bayonet to dig with. Add two more minutes to cover up the hole and stamp it down. Everything will depend on how long the Heredistas can be fooled.’

‘Won’t they have a searchlight on the beach?’ I asked.

‘They will until we shoot it out. By the way, can you sing out any commands in Russian?’

‘No. I can do you German.’

‘Good enough – no, on second thoughts it isn’t. We must be word perfect. Make it American! After all, they know what that sounds like from the cinema.’

I asked what ammunition we were using. I had noticed that our machine-guns were Russian.

‘Splendid! I take it back. We are Russian, secretly preparing a possible landing site. Try that on the morning papers when the news gets out. What a pity nobody reads them outside Malpelo!’

‘Mayne, are you really a communist?’

‘Just to put the fear of God into anyone who wants to tinker with Malpelo.’

He pointed out that we had not the time or the energy to manhandle our two machine-guns downhill so we might as well leave them to be captured where they were or a little lower. The model for our deceit would be the bullfight. Having provoked the charge, we sidestep it, dig up the Punchao and let them settle down after they retire from their gallant charge on nothing. They’ll think that the Russians bolted in time for fear of being discovered and our way out will be clear.

‘How does that seem to you, comrades?’

‘It doesn’t sound to me a bit like Russians,’ said one of them. ‘Suppose the bull won’t charge?’

‘In that case we shall put a firework under his tail.’

But it couldn’t be much of a firework, for we had only a few belts of ammunition. Our first short burst from good cover scattered the section quietly lazing on the beach and they blazed away with automatic rifle fire till we shot out their two searchlights. To persuade them that all the same they were on target we provided some groans and exclamations as of wounded. There was then a moment of comparative silence punctuated by single snipers who thought they saw something moving. We had almost given up hope when some gallant officer led an attack up the path down which we had all poured to the sea during the first battle. That was our last chance and we took it. In three minutes – I had prophesied correctly – we had dug up the Punchao and smoothed the ground.

There it was, the Punchao at last! It joined me in the basket chair. I could imagine the morning papers in two or three days’ time. Victory over the communists. Raiding party thrown back by our gallant defenders. Two machine-guns captured. Naturally, no mention that they belonged to the President’s yacht. Heredia could manage his press all right. Dispute a communiqué of the General Staff, and you might well end up in Heredia’s private office under the palace – if enough of it remained.

Mayne wanted to get out as soon as the moon set and there was nearly complete darkness between the hills. I disagreed. The time to get out was now, when the Heredistas would be all gathered around the captured gun and chattering in amazement at the empty hilltop. I remembered the rocks and gullies down which the mother and son must have come to search for the bodies of their dead, and I insisted that there must be a path used only by the villagers of Ramales.

‘But what about you?’ he replied.

‘Give me a man to shove and one in front to lift. I shall leave the Punchao with you in case we are caught.’

Mayne agreed. He told me afterwards that he had thought I should be going to certain death either on the slope or as a prisoner. Well, I was not so sure. We were both inclined to forget that the Heredistas did not know and could not know that we had the Punchao. So far as they were concerned, we were only a band of saboteurs, outnumbered and running for our lives.

So the rest of the party set off into the black cliffs of the night. Any sounds they made were covered by the chatter around the two guns – for the second had now been discovered – and the attempts to move them. The shouts, the falling stones and the occasional splashes and curses as someone fell into the stream above the falls made the movements of the Heredistas sound like a river picnic. After all, they had no reason to keep silent and the relief of reaching the top of the little valley without a single casualty made them even noisier than usual.

Meanwhile, the basket chair struggled upwards like a wounded lizard. Considering that we were constantly in a position where one man was pushing and the other supporting the chair with one wheel in space, the lizard was remarkably silent. The biggest risk was that I should lose control and scream at the intolerable pain.

Once we were over the worst and above the two guns, Mayne and two more of his chaps came down to help and the party carried me and the chair to safety. We were in thick cover by the side of the road to Jumilla, within easy reach of the rest of the party from the yacht.

It must be remembered that poor Hector had three loyalties: one to his wife, Carlota, one to the Punchao and one to me. Heredia’s objective was first and foremost the Punchao. If I were alive I must be captured and the truth torn from my body, which in fact did not feel as if there was anything left in it to tear. According to Hector’s news, the main body of the Heredistas must now be organised and on the march towards us without any opposition. The loyalty of this force was shaky, as we had seen at the time of the attempted mutiny, but we could not gain any advantage from that unless we marched under the Punchao and Heredia was dead or a prisoner.

‘Who is in command under the President?’ I asked Hector.

‘Various stories. I don’t know for certain. What is obvious is that Heredia is taking no special precautions, simply advancing with a scratch force of various regiments. After all, what have we got to oppose him?’

‘The Punchao.’

‘Oh God! Not Joan of Arc again! Teresa has become an army joke.’

‘But not as a standard bearer for her late father.’

‘Who is to represent him?’

‘Mayne. He has brought us luck.’

‘But he’s a communist.’

‘What could be better for a revolt of the army?’

‘But we don’t want any help from the Russians.’

‘You won’t get it. The last thing the Russians want is to be caught meddling so near to the Canal.’

‘Well, let’s go and talk to him! He’s between those two rocks over there. I can see the top of a bottle. Boy Scouts should be taught to keep it out of sight. I can easily wheel you over there.’

We were welcomed with a grin and two good shots of rum. He held my mug to my lips with the precision of a butler and the gentleness of a nurse. Not a bad omen, I thought, for a future head of state.

‘Mayne, tell us the truth: are you a communist or are you not?’ Hector asked bluntly.

‘In so far as my little-tolerated state is concerned, I am a Marxist. If you are referring to the larger economics of Malpelo I support what a fairly primitive agricultural society can hope to obtain. Decent government and power without brutality.’

‘Gentlemen, if I could lift an arm to propose a toast,’ I said, ‘I would give you Mayne as the next President of Malpelo.’

‘But he can’t just be imposed on us!’ Hector protested.

‘Yes, he can. And never mind if Washington has kittens and has to finance an armed movement of the right. As for the British government, they have only to deny any knowledge of the new hysteria of Central America.’

‘I have never heard of anything so damned ridiculous,’ Mayne said. ‘For one thing, I am an Englishman.’

‘Any village lawyer can make you a citizen of Malpelo. We have had presidents of French and German origin. Why not British?’

‘The people would not accept me. For one thing, I am not a Catholic.’

‘Well, the Archbishop can fix that.’

‘Do you really think so?’ Mayne said. ‘Well, I was very fond of the bishop whom Molinos appointed to the province. And so were my daughters.’

Donna came racing down the hill with a note from Pepe tied to her collar saying that the Heredistas had halted at the junction with the main road and were detaching a party to explore the cove. In about an hour we should be dead or prisoners. Mayne looked dreamily at the blue Pacific.

‘Thought of anything?’ I asked.

‘Just meditating on the sixteenth century. How is the tide?’

‘Nearly a full spring tide,’ Hector replied. ‘There may be another foot in it.’

‘Then she might float if we all give her a hearty push.’

‘She will. The harbour guns hit her above the waterline. Hawkins, your ancestor would have cut her out! I know Heredia – he won’t be able to see her without going on board to inspect the damage. He’s that fond of her. Hector, take your men quickly up the path and hide them well among the rocks. Any of you chaps from the underground garage who can handle a boat, stay with me! The rest of you run like hell to meet our main force and give them the latest from the front. Tell them I’m going to capture the President and put to sea!’

We were all silent; but on considering the plan, it was not so unspeakably dangerous as it appeared. The President was unlikely to come on board with more than half a dozen of his guard and we could easily deal with them. The yacht gave us no trouble. She was only just aground forward and with all of us shoving she came off the bank with only a slight grinding of pebbles.

The dinghy was hanging over the stern. We let it into the water, nearly knocking down the torturer’s head which we had forgotten. With the dinghy on shore, all was ready for His Excellency to step into and be paddled by a couple of strokes to the steps of the companionway. All we needed was a flag.

It was a close thing. By now we could hear the irregular flutter of engines as the vehicles of the President’s guard descended the path and pulled out on to the beach on each side of a gap. Was it for the President’s armoured car? Probable, but we could not know. We waited, six of us below decks together with me, hauled up from the dinghy in my basket chair and half-conscious. The yacht’s engineer whom we had preserved as an indispensable prisoner before the yacht left harbour, kept the engines ticking over with a couple of rifles a foot from his head.

The President’s armoured car came swaying down the hill and filled the space left for it. We remained still as corpses, but corpses now at least with a very good chance of escaping hell. Mayne had slipped down into the engine room while Heredia was climbing aboard. The President’s face was radiant. Mayne had been right. The yacht was his very favourite toy.

At the helm was one of Mayne’s devoted seamen, who, like most of the inhabitants of Jumilla, was unknown to Heredia. As soon as the President went below to inspect the damage he was seized and gagged. His eyes met mine for a moment. I grinned at him and passed my finger across my throat. It cost me a moment of agony to force a finger to the level of my neck but the expression on his face was worth it.

Mayne’s orders to the helm were crisp and effective. ‘Full speed astern!’ I could guess that, but the rest of the Spanish orders were beyond me. They came thick and fast with the result that we found ourselves close under the black cliff to the left of the cove where not a shot could reach us.

We were safe for the moment, but their guns – wherever they were – had only to extract themselves from the column, reverse up the hill and take position on the other side of the cove to blow us out of the water. Could the shells reach us? Doubtful. If they could, were they likely to fire when their President and Commander-in-Chief was on board the yacht and possibly helpless? The only solution for us seemed to be to put to sea and bargain for the President’s life.

The advance guard of the Retadores must by now have made contact with our runners and received a vague and dubious picture of what was happening. Were they close enough to come to the rescue? We could not know and the longer the uncertainty continued, the less secure we felt.

The first indication that all could be well was a satisfying explosion from the invisible cove followed by a whole tattoo of explosions which we could not understand. Hector dived in and felt his way round the foot of the cliff till he could get a partial view of the cove. In five minutes he was back spitting sea water and cheers. Two of the guns of the Retadores were firing from the hills above the cove on the packed column of the Heredista vehicles which could only escape by reversing up the narrow approach road or running down the rest of the way to the beach and turning there, presenting a target which the relentless gunners above them could not miss. The sky, where we could see it, was full of bits and pieces of flying metal accompanied by the yells of drivers to their neighbours to get out of the way. It was an indescribable tangle with flames trickling along the line of vehicles. Those who escaped had not yet lined up to engage in the descent.

We let the mess take care of itself, for we could only stay in place, rocking gently in the wavelets which came round the corner and profiting, I suppose, from the reluctance of the senior officer of the Heredistas to turn the airforce loose on the precious yacht and the President if he were on board.

But we had far from won; it was stalemate. Shells from the well-equipped Heredista artillery were bursting on the edge of the cliff in an attempt to reach the yacht – a bold but futile attempt, for we had only to go astern a few yards to make their shells as harmless as Handel’s Water Music. With our handful of men we could neither attack nor escape. The only possible solution was to execute Heredia and let it be seen that he was dead. If they wanted his body they could have it.

Barely distinguishable in the general racket the bugles of the Heredistas screamed cease-fire. That was unexpected. They had an overwhelming force even without their main body. It was hard to remember that they did not know for what they were fighting. To them the battle was the usual revolutionary uprising, easily squashed. It meant little to them that we held the Punchao.

‘Can we trust them?’ Mayne asked, looking up to the polluted sky as if it could give an answer. He came out from the protection of the cliff and faced the beach, where the mass of Heredia’s infantry who had rushed the line of flame had gathered, and spoke to them in the Indian tongue. I could not understand a word, but the ring of the linked sentences carried its own message. More and more Heredistas were pouring down through the gaps in the burning vehicles. They stopped to listen, accepting the cease-fire.

There was some movement at the head of the valley. My bearers told me that an armoured car had come down the hill and halted short of a gap in the flaming serpent of the Heredista advance guard. I could see for myself that two female figures rushed across the cinders and were now striding hand in hand down the highest slopes of shingle on to the beach. These were Juana and the eldest of Mayne’s daughters – as splendid a pair of Spanish women as one could wish to see, the one too generous in build but still commanding, the other a flower blown down from the dark forest to the sea.

Juana had not realised who was in command of the Retadores and believed that I was. In retrospect, I see that for the moment she was right. For her my tattered basket chair had become a throne. She fell on her knees before it, employing in real life every gesture she had learned from the cinema. Mayne’s lovely mestiza daughter stood behind her, playing the lady-in-waiting with a perfection that was instinctive rather than acted. It was impossible that she could have had a swift word of advice from her father; they had been too far apart and separated by the smoke of the burning vehicles.

I bowed to Juana. There was nothing else but my neck that I could move.

‘You must not kneel to me, my lady,’ I told her. ‘It is I who should kneel to you.’

‘You bought your freedom in London, Mr Hawkins. And you bought it again without money when you kept my secret.’

‘Then shall we make another bargain?’ I suggested. ‘If my commander agrees – and I am sure he will – you and your husband will be given your visas for the United States on condition that you leave Malpelo tomorrow.’

‘You forgive him?’

‘Not for a moment. But we will forget what he did to me.’

The Heredistas were growing restive as their numbers flooded down into the cove. I had only one weapon left which I was preserving for some desperate climax. But the climax was on us now.

I turned to my bearers.

‘Can you lift me to that white rock below the fall?’

‘Easily, senor.’

It had a fairly flat top and the chair could be held steady with a hand on each side of it.

I waited until Mayne joined us to see what I was up to.

‘Take off my shirt!’ I ordered one of the bearers. ‘Turn my chair to face the setting sun!’

‘Excellency, the Punchao is yours,’ I said to Mayne. ‘Lift it from my shoulders and hold it up for your armies to see!’

Even Mayne was amazed at its power and beauty. He had never before seen the Punchao in its proper setting of black cliffs and sparkling sea. What had the sun and stars to do with savage human disputes to the death on a hillside already fertilised by blood and scraps of meaningless paper? Well, to me, they gave a moment’s view of the eternal.

Juana was silent – from shame, I think. It was Mayne’s daughter who broke the sudden moment of silence by a cry, clear as the scream of a hawk.

‘CARA AL SOL!’

Face to the Sun. The war cry of the Spanish guerrillas when faced with certain death. The Retadores recognised it though it had seldom been heard since Heredia’s triumph and then only from the ranks of rebels in arms awaiting execution.

I told them to drag me up to the brow of the hill, from which there was a view of the bay and of the rugged slope inland which the main body of Retadores were now climbing.

‘It is drama that the Punchao needs,’ I said to Mayne. ‘There is a path between the rocks which you cannot see. If you want to become a legend, lead the Punchao to the top. When I last went that way there were a woman and her child searching for a beloved corpse.’

There could be no doubt who was in command of the advance guard of horsemen now descending the track to the beach. She was dressed in white and crimson and leading her men recklessly over the pebbles.

‘Tell your men to escort the former President from the yacht,’ Mayne said to her.

‘What right have you to give me orders?’

‘The right of the Punchao, and of Hawkins its faithful guardian.’

‘Hawkins?’ She took another look at the hunched cripple in his basket chair. ‘They told me Heredia had killed him.’

‘Not quite,’ I heard myself squawk.

Even my voice was not immediately recognisable. She told me afterwards that it seemed to float between us until it settled.

She kissed my forehead. Her tears in some way relaxed me. I had no longer to be overwhelmed by pain. I think I must have let myself faint for when I was fully conscious again Heredia had been escorted up from the yacht and was standing on the shingle a little below me – Heredia with set face and four lances a yard from his body. He showed no fear. It may be that he had long since prepared himself for such an end. Hector had nothing but the word of a powerless friend to give him confidence. Evidently he had been asking of what he was accused. In his voice rang the indignation of Daniel in the Lion’s Den. The vanished days of two empires came alive.

‘You are accused, my precious Lord McMurtrie or whatever you call yourself, of stealing and concealing the treasure of the nation and will be dealt with by due process of law as soon as there is any. Take him away!’

‘Well, I’ll be damned!’ Hector exclaimed.

‘You certainly will be,’ Teresa told him. ‘Must I remind you that you have been found in arms against the legal President of the country? We shall not, I think, impose the death sentence but be content with immediate expulsion.’

I had known that steely ring of her voice in earlier days; it did not now strike me as entirely convincing. The fire was prepared with great care but where was the flame from the match? Mayne had never met Teresa before, and the only evidence that he had any experience of the depths beneath the Latin woman was the existence of his three daughters one of whom was at the moment comforting Juana.

The Heredistas, deprived of action, were growing restless. The scattered units were calling to each other and joining comrades like hungry sharks, waiting in small bands to break the cease-fire. They knew that somewhere between the cove and Jumilla their main body was halted until the track down to the sea was clear of vehicles. Even so, attack could be extremely expensive. The people of Malpelo were not a patient breed, and it was very clear what would happen to their president if they moved. He was not so loved that it mattered, but they, the gallant Heredistas, could then march home victorious.

Curiosity saved us. An armed car crashed through the layer of cinders and drew up in a shower of sand and pebbles. A sergeant got out and opened the door as formally as if the car had returned to the palace from a shopping expedition. Proud and upright, Lady McMurtrie looked at the scattered pockets of troops. Simply looked. It was enough. Officers called them to attention and presented arms. I thought she was going to wave the lances which threatened her father to one side, but that was too much to expect. She stood – deliberately I am sure – in a pool of blood.

‘Who is in command here?’ she asked.

Mayne gave the only possible reply.

‘I am,’ he said coldly. ‘Your parents are leaving Malpelo now. Do you wish to accompany them?’

‘They will not leave Malpelo.’

‘Yes, yes, we must, Carlota,’ her mother sobbed, ‘or they will kill Cayetano here and now.’

Nothing would have given me more satisfaction than to see one of those four lances driven home and Heredia wriggling like a hooked fish just hauled from the water.

But there was another loyalty ready to be tested. One of the four stepped back a pace and lowered his lance. His comrade spotted in time what he intended, parried the thrust and drove home his own. The effect was what I had seen in my own fevered imagination. Carlota leaped forward, drew out the lance and stood between her father and the growing pool of pumping blood. By God, the courage of it! There was a sort of hiss, a hoarse hiss, between the hills and the sea. Father and daughter formed a bond more sacred to Latin culture than to ours. There was a straggled cheer from the Heredistas which picked up volume and suddenly died. I could imagine the reaction of a company sergeant major from the disciplined north. Two arrests. Close of play.

It was the Church which rescued us from mutual massacre. The same priest who had been present in the mess when I was invited to join the officers of the Retadores at their supper strode out to the dead lancer. He had ridden with Teresa in the certainty of being needed. He raised his hand to extinguish the last of the sparks creeping in his hair, knelt by the dead guard and called on God with what, at a less emotional moment, I should have called a conventional Letter of Introduction. I don’t think the dead lancer needed one. He had obeyed his heart.

Oh God, protect us from our loyalties! The killer had been true to his military oath of obedience: the victim to requital of some outrage committed upon his family or perhaps some single woman. What is our duty?

Mayne, owing no allegiance to either, showed his power of command. He withdrew the remaining three guards, leaving Heredia alone to the judgement of his people. It has been disputed whether or not he turned to me for advice. His eyebrows, raised in swift question, could only have been detected by a few and they were watching the priest.

‘Viva Carlota!’ he shouted.

He took off the Punchao, carried it to Carlota and hung it round her neck.

‘Subject to the approval of the army, I propose the Lady Carlota as your President.’

The cove rang with approval. Nobody wanted to fight it out. Carlota herself was amazed, but did not show it. After all, she was a reasonable alternative. She must have known that her election could not endure but no one was in a mood to say so. Then came her most brilliant touch. She took off the Punchao and invested Hector.

‘To the museum,’ she cried, ‘where it belongs.’

There were too many interests alive to start another civil war. Heredia could never recover his power. Mayne was only too thankful to gather up his daughters and return to his beloved Jumilla. Even Donna did not wish to declare herself. She had discovered Pepe was in the crowd and she wanted no other. God, how I envied her!

The rest of my story you know except, perhaps, the last moments of a man and woman measuring, as I thought, the end of a beginning.

‘Do you remember Nueva Beria,’ Teresa asked, ‘where you stole for me a wedding dress?’

‘Yes. It was too large.’

‘But I still have it.’

‘It won’t be smart enough for you to wear.’

‘It will if I have the Punchao as well. Hector, can I borrow it for the day?’ ‘Yes, of course, if you give me sufficient notice.’

‘I will ask the curandera how long she needs. She has had practice enough under that devil – more experience than any army doctor.’

‘How long she needs for what?’

‘For us to ride or march forever so long as you are by my side.’

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1988 by Geoffrey Household

Cover design by Drew Padrutt

978-1-4532-9353-9

This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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Table of Contents

Title Page

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Copyright