Authors: Eric Ambler
Doctor Frigo (37 page)
‘Agriculture. Get my hands right down into the earth.’
‘I thought machines did that better now.’
He didn’t bother to answer. ‘You know the one person here I really want to meet? El Lobo. I don’t suppose you know him.’
‘Quite well. I’ll introduce you.’
I did.
Later, after the burial, I shared a car with Lobo back into the city.
‘What did you think of young Villegas?’ I asked.
He shrugged. ‘Maoist, but he’ll get over that. He’ll learn. Could be useful in a year or two.’
‘In Social Security?’
He emitted his implosive laugh. ‘My dear Ernesto, when Santos becomes President next month there are going to be changes. Paco can’t last long can he? You’ve only got to look at all that blue lace on his cheeks. There are at least ten other doubtfuls. Shuffle and reshuffle, that’s how it’s going to be for quite a while.’
‘I hear quite a lot of people talking about stability.’
‘Ah,
talking
about it.’
‘All right then,
longing
for it.’
He patted my knee. ‘Tell you what, Ernesto. You cling to your illusions, I’ll cling to mine. Agreed?’
‘If you’ll promise me one thing.’
The fish eyes slid round. ‘What?’
‘Don’t ever tell your young Maoist friend that his father died a martyr to the cause.’
The idea greatly amused him. He giggled all the way back to the Nuevo Mundo.
Full Cabinet meeting. Don Tomás announced with deep regret my resignation, made necessary by the terms of the Constitution, Clause twenty, Section eleven. It had been the Minister of Education himself who had drawn his attention to the anomaly. The sense of public responsibility shown by Don Ernesto had been in the highest tradition, and entirely worthy of his name.
A suggestion, put forward by some eager idiot, that the clause should be modified or ignored was dismissed by Don Tomás with words of contempt which had my wholehearted approval. Only barbarians tamper with, or ignore, Constitutions.
The subsequent press conference was happily dull. Arrivals from obscurity may be news. Departures to it are a bore.
Delvert thought that it would be unwise if he were to accompany me to the airport. He was sure I would understand.
The one who did accompany me was Monsignor Montanaro. As I was persuading the cashier at the Nuevo Mundo that the whole of my bill, not just part of it, should be charged to the Ministry of Education and/or the Presidential
Office, a call came from him. Unless I had made other arrangements we could go together in his car.
It was not as comfortable as the Nuncio’s and the Monsignor drove himself. He drove slowly and badly. Since I was taking a connecting flight to Antigua that had never yet managed to arrive on time, I didn’t care how slowly we went.
‘A pity that you feel you must go,’ he said as we lurched through the barrios. ‘We need doctors more than Ministers of Education.’
‘You have excellent doctors, Monsignor.’
‘If Dr Torres has his way we will need many more.’
‘You will get them I’m sure.’
‘What troubles me really, Don Ernesto, is the shape of things to come.’
‘Of affluence, Monsignor?’
‘Oh we won’t have that for years, oil or no oil. I meant the prospect of immediate improvements.’
‘I don’t think I understand.’
‘Let us take medical improvements then. Endemic diseases are an evil you may say.’
‘Yes.’
He wrenched the car back from the edge of a drainage ditch to the crown of the road. I presume that God was with us. If we had met a truck travelling in the opposite direction on the next bend there would have been a major disaster.
‘Yet are endemic diseases wholly evil? Rid yourself of them and, where fifty persons out of a hundred were sick before, you now have one hundred healthy. But you have also doubled your economic problem. True?’
‘Yes.’
‘When people become well and energetic they want work or interesting leisure. If you have neither to offer them they become angry. Then they turn to the El Lobos. Oil will make no more work than coffee, just bank balances. In good years coffee has done that too.’
‘I have no answer, Monsignor. Have you? Christian Socialism perhaps?’
‘Oh no.’
‘I’m sorry, but …’
‘I am not offering the Church as an escape hatch, Don Ernesto, any more than you, I would think, would offer Democratic Socialism, whatever that is. No government, however well intentioned, can do things
for
people without also doing things
to
them.’
‘Forgive me, Monsignor, but that is part of a sociological platitude. The rest of it is that you can only do things
with
them. Comforting but meaningless.’
‘Not entirely, I think. It was Father Bartolomé’s view for a while. He did much good among his people then.’
‘You surprise me, Monsignor.’
‘Oh, of course he became corrupt and disgraced us all. It’s so easy. Easy for priests, but even easier for governments.’
We got to the airport soon after that. Only two near misses, and the incoming plane was a mere half-hour late.
As we said goodbye and I thanked him he clasped my hands.
‘Don’t believe what they are saying now about Father Bartolomé, Don Ernesto. He never climbed those steps and he didn’t fire those shots. He couldn’t have done. Without glasses he could scarcely see. But he would never wear them in public, or even in private unless he had to. A curious vanity that no one seems to have mentioned. Perhaps because they didn’t know of it. Careless of them though. If one is going to blame a man for a great crime one ought to know everything about him. Difficult, unless one is God.’
Went through into the departure lounge. Nothing left to do but wait and think.
I am no longer Doctor Basch.
I have declined the dukedoms of Lorraine and Tuscany.
I was never Maximilian.
I was nearly an Emperor Ferdinand, someone promptly to be disposed of when he became a nuisance.
As a keeper of secrets I have been a failure, and as a man of action ineffectual. Even Colonel Apis would have thought twice before sending me to Sarajevo.
Not Gavrilo Princip then; not even Cabrinovic who threw the bomb that missed.
What will I be back in St Paul?
Doctor Frigo again?
Only occasionally now, I think, and in a modified version.
No doubt Elizabeth will have the full answer – a fitting reincarnation based on sound precedents.
Perhaps an eighteenth-century Hapsburg general who didn’t lose
all
his battles?
There must, surely, have been one or two.
Eric Ambler
Eric Ambler was born in London in 1909. Before turning to writing full-time, he worked at an engineering firm, and wrote copy for an advertising agency. His first novel was published in 1936. During the course of his career, Ambler was awarded two Gold Daggers, a Silver Dagger, and a Diamond Dagger from the Crime Writers Association of Great Britain, named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers Association of America, and made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II. In addition to his novels, Ambler wrote a number of screenplays, including
A Night to Remember
and
The Cruel Sea
, which won him an Oscar nomination. Eric Ambler died in 1998.
Books by Eric Ambler
The Dark Frontier
Background to Danger
Epitaph for a Spy
Cause for Alarm
A Coffin for Dimitrios
Journey Into Fear
Judgment on Deltchev
The Schirmer Inheritance
State of Siege
Passage of Arms
The Light of Day
The Ability to Kill and Other Pieces
(Essays)
A Kind of Anger
To Catch a Spy
(Editor)
The Intercom Conspiracy
The Levanter
Doctor Frigo
The Siege of the Villa Lipp
The Care of Time
Here Lies Eric Ambler
(Autobiography)
The Story So Far
E
RIC
A
MBLER
BACKGROUND TO DANGER
Kenton’s career as a journalist depended on his exceptional facility with languages, his knowledge of European politics, and his quick judgment. Where his judgment sometimes failed him was in his personal life. When he finds himself on a train bound for Austria after a bad night of gambling, he eagerly takes an opportunity to earn money helping a refugee smuggle securities across the border. He soon discovers that the documents he holds have more than monetary value, and that European politics has more twists and turns than the most convoluted newspaper account.
Fiction/Suspense
CAUSE FOR ALARM
Nicky Marlow needs a job. He’s engaged to be married and the employment market is pretty slim in Britain in 1937. So when his fiancée points out the Italian Spartacus Machine Tool notice, he jumps at the chance. After all, he speaks Italian and can endure Milan long enough to save some money. Soon after he arrives, though, he learns the sinister truth of his predecessor’s death and finds himself courted by two agents with dangerously different agendas. In the process, Marlow realizes it’s not so simple just to do the job he’s paid to do in fascist Italy on the brink of war.
Fiction/Suspense
A COFFIN FOR DIMITRIOS
A chance encounter with a Turkish colonel who has a penchant for British crime novels leads mystery writer Charles Latimer into a world of menacing political and criminal maneuvers throughout the Balkans in the years between the world wars. Hoping that the career of the notorious Dimitrios, whose body has been identified in an Istanbul morgue, will inspire a story line for his next book, Latimer soon finds himself caught up in a shadowy web of murder, espionage, drugs, and treachery.
Fiction/Suspense
JOURNEY INTO FEAR
Returning to his hotel room after a late-night flirtation with a cabaret dancer at an Istanbul nightspot, Graham is surprised by an intruder with a gun. What follows is a nightmare of intrigue for the English armaments engineer as he makes his way home aboard an Italian freighter. Among the passengers are a couple of Nazi assassins intent on preventing his returning to England with plans for a Turkish defense system, the seductive cabaret dancer and her manager husband, and a number of surprising allies.
Fiction/Suspense
JUDGMENT ON DELTCHEV
Foster is hired by an American newspaper to cover the trial of Yordan Deltchev, who faces charges of treason. Accused of masterminding a plot to assassinate his country’s leader, Deltchev may in fact be a pawn and his trial all show. But when Foster meets Deltchev’s powerful wife, he becomes enmeshed in a conspiracy that is more life-threatening than he could have imagined.
Fiction/Suspense
THE LIGHT OF DAY
When Arthur Abdel Simpson first spots Harper in the Athens airport, he recognizes him as a tourist unfamiliar with the city and in need of a private driver. In other words, the perfect mark for Simpson’s brand of entrepreneurship. But Harper proves to be more the spider than the fly when he catches Simpson riffling through his wallet for traveler’s checks. Soon Simpson finds himself blackmailed into driving a suspicious car across the Turkish border. Then, when he is caught again, this time by the police, he faces a choice: cooperate with the Turks and spy on his erstwhile colleagues or end up in one of Turkey’s notorious prisons. The authorities suspect an attempted coup, but Harper has something much bigger planned.
Fiction/Suspense
PASSAGE OF ARMS
Greg and Dorothy Nilsen had wanted to go on an adventurous trip, but their cruise is turning out to be a bore. So when the gracious Mr. Tan asks Greg to go to Singapore to resolve a bureaucratic detail involving a consignment of small arms, Greg is surprisingly receptive. All he has to do is sign some papers, he’s told, and he’ll be paid a handsome fee. And everything does go smoothly, until it comes to getting a check cosigned by the rebel leader.…
Fiction/Suspense
THE SCHIRMER INHERITANCE
George Carey, former WWII bomber pilot and newly minted lawyer, was given the ignoble task of going through the tons of files on the Schneider Johnson case, just to make sure nothing had been overlooked. But as luck would have it, Carey discovered something among the false claims and dead-end leads that made this into more than just another missing-heir-to-a-vast-fortune case. And what he found would connect a deserter from Napoleon’s defeated army to a guerrilla fighter in postwar Greece, and lead Carey into a dangerous situation where his survival would depend more on what he learned in the army than anything he learned in law school.
Fiction/Suspense
STATE OF SIEGE
After a three-year stint in the former Dutch Southeast Asian colony of Sunda, Steve Fraser is looking forward to going home. But Sunda is newly independent, and a fundamentalist Islamic faction is set on overthrowing the provisional government. So instead of enjoying his last weekend in the capital, Fraser finds himself dodging bullets as well as the shifting loyalties of the coup’s lieutenants.
Fiction/Suspense
FORTHCOMING FROM VINTAGE CRIME/BLACK LIZARD
The Ability to Kill
The Care of Time
The Dark Frontier
Doctor Frigo
Here Lies Eric Ambler: An Autobiography
The Intercom Conspiracy
A Kind of Anger
The Levanter
The Siege of Villa Lipp
This Gun for Hire
Waiting for Orders
VINTAGE CRIME/BLACK LIZARD
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