Authors: Eric Ambler
‘It is kind of you to say so, Doña Julia.’
‘In Mexico, you know, we had access to the American British Hospital. The lingua franca there was English of course. However, there are, I understand, basic differences other than language between medical teaching practices in France and North America.’
‘Hardly basic.’
‘No? Dr Massot’s readings of my husband’s blood pressure caused some confusion I can tell you.’
‘Is your husband specially interested in his blood pressure?’
‘Isn’t every man of his age?’
‘Some I know prefer completely to ignore it.’
‘That’s true enough,’ said Uncle Paco. ‘Personally, my blood pressure is the last thing I want to hear about.’
‘Dear Paco. Nobody can be expected to want to hear bad news.’ She patted his arm affectionately, but I thought that the fond smile with which she accompanied the gesture had a leavening of dislike in it. ‘I was merely warning Dr Castillo of Don Manuel’s appetite for fact.’
Uncle Paco’s grin revealed extensive bridgework. ‘I’ve no doubt he’ll find out about that soon enough, my dear. That is, if we ever give him a chance to do so.’
‘Of course, I was forgetting.’ Her smile switched to me. ‘Dr Castillo has his responsibilities at the hospital as well as his duty to the police.’ There was dry ice in the smile now. ‘Will you show your young friend up and introduce him, Paco dear?’
With a curt nod to me she left.
As the heels of her sandals clacked away over the marble Uncle Paco took a cigar case from his shirt pocket.
‘A stupid woman,’ he remarked. ‘Arrogant. When he gets to power she’ll make enemies for him. Not of old friends perhaps, but among the doubtful, the undecided.’ He drew a cigar out and slid the case shut. ‘In which category will you be, Ernesto? You don’t object, I hope, to my presuming on our earlier acquaintance by addressing you familiarly?’
‘No, Don Paco. As for your other question, I shall be in the category of the totally uninterested.’
‘That is what your Commissaire Gillon told me.’ He turned and waddled out on to the terrace.
I followed, thinking that I was being taken to see the patient, but after few paces he stopped and eased himself down on to the leg end of a chaise longue.
‘Sit down for a moment, Ernesto.’ He waved me to a chair facing him. ‘There’s nothing wrong with Don Manuel that won’t keep. Would you like a drink?’
‘No thank you.’
‘Quite right. Much too early.’
I sat and waited while he lit his cigar. Finally he looked up.
‘Are you very angry with me, Ernesto?’
‘Angry, Don Paco?’
He tossed the spent match into an ashtray.
‘For getting you mixed up with us here.’
‘Should I be?’
‘You might. It took a lot of manoeuvring I can tell you. Paris wanted us in Guadeloupe. Tight security very easy there, they said. I suggested St Martin. I knew they wouldn’t fall for that, of course. Easy access to the Dutch is the last thing they want for us at the moment. So we compromised on St Paul. They made a big concession of it, of course. They knew I wanted you in the picture, though they pretended not to. Giving us that idiot Massot when I asked for a Spanish-speaking doctor must have seemed a pretty little joke. But the joke turned sour on them. It seems they took Massot’s own word for it that he could speak Spanish. Didn’t check. Once I had that fiasco to dangle under their noses they couldn’t refuse me. Though they tried. Talked about how essential your work was to the hospital. Even had the impertinence to suggest that it might be politically unwise to bring you in. Provincial half-wits!’
I was by now quite angry but did my best not to show it.
‘Is Don Manuel aware of this manoeuvring of yours, Uncle Paco?’
He smirked. ‘That’s better. I was waiting for you to call me that. Had to annoy you first though.’
‘I asked if Don Manuel knows that …’
‘Of course he doesn’t know.’ He spoke sharply. ‘Foreign affairs – and in our case that means relations with the governments that kindly tolerate our presence on their territory – are my business. And a very squalid business it can be. You know that even though you’ve tried to keep
out of it. But someone has to take the kicks and see that the leader keeps his dignity. It’s too easy for conspirators in exile to become ridiculous. That, too, you must know.’ He paused. ‘I was sorry to hear about your mother.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Though I think you were wise not to relieve your feelings legally on those thieves who swindled her.’
‘You know about that then?’
‘That, and a great deal more, Ernesto. More perhaps than you realize. I made it my business to keep tabs on Florida. And on you of course.’
‘Avuncular interest, Don Paco?’
‘Certainly not. Your name’s Castillo. Do you think it’s forgotten at home?’
‘Sentimentally remembered by a few perhaps. For political purposes, I would think, quite forgotten.’
He shook his head. ‘Even those Florida fools know better than that. They designated you heir to the Party leadership. There was even talk of making you president in exile. Oh, I don’t blame you for keeping your distance from that kind of foolishness, but that’s not to say that there was no element
at all
of sense in it.’
‘There’s gold in every litre of seawater I’m told. That doesn’t make it worthwhile to keep bottles of the stuff.’
He grinned. ‘So that’s the way you see it. I am both glad and relieved. But I should warn you, Ernesto. Don Manuel thinks differently. His view is that those Florida idiots always mishandled you’ – he leaned forward slightly – ‘that you have never been
effectively tempted.
’ The moment he had said the words, he flung up his hands defensively as if I had been about to strike him. ‘You must make allowances, Ernesto, please. Many things have changed with us recently, things I cannot yet discuss even with you. Don Manuel has been subjected to unusual, sometimes terrible, pressures. We all have.’
‘So I would imagine. One oil company would be bad
enough. A consortium of five, plus –’ I hesitated elaborately – ‘plus other interested parties must be quite oppressive.’
I hadn’t really expected much of a reaction; all I had meant to do was try out Elizabeth’s theory on someone to whom, even if there were only a grain of truth in it, it might mean something. The result was surprising. Uncle Paco’s dewlaps suddenly became still.
‘I suppose Gillon has been talking,’ he said finally. ‘Or was it Delvert?’
‘It wasn’t Gillon and I don’t know anyone named Delvert.’ I stood up. ‘My appointment here was for eleven o’clock. It is now ten past. My patient is leader of the Democratic Socialist Party and entitled to respect as well as courtesy. I don’t think I should keep him waiting any longer.’
The smile returned but very faintly. After a moment he nodded towards the terrace door.
‘There’s a bell there,’ he said. ‘Ring it. The man, Antoine, will show you up.’
I found the button and pressed it, but as the sound of the distant bell reached the terrace he spoke again.
‘Don Manuel will try to change your mind.’
I looked back. He was pointing his cigar at me and moving the end in small circles as if he expected it to cast some sort of spell on me.
‘About what, Uncle Paco?’ I asked. ‘Oil consortia?’
He giggled. ‘No, Ernesto. About the amount of gold in seawater.’
By then the butler was approaching. It was to the butler he spoke as I turned away.
‘I’ll be here when the Doctor comes down, Antoine. Make sure that he doesn’t leave without seeing me. Monsieur Villegas will receive him now.’
Villegas has a vast bedroom-cum-study with three tall windows looking out over the Grand Mamelon to the sea. The air-conditioning is formidably efficient.
He rose from his desk to greet me and for a moment I
thought it was my father standing there. Then I remembered something long forgotten. My father’s political protégés, the up-and-coming Party men he favoured, had always been of the same physical type, youthful projections of himself. It must have been a disappointment to him that I took after my mother’s side of the family.
Villegas, anyway, is remarkably like him. Is it possible that the similarity has been cultivated?
He is tall with only a small paunch, and, for a man of his age, apparently well preserved. The complexion is pale, smooth and clear, the thick grey hair carefully tended. There is a patrician air about him, which makes it easy to forget that
his
father was a customs inspector; just as the candid brown eyes, staring through one into the middle distance as if in a search for truth, make it easy to forget that he is a politician. He has glasses which, while I was there, he held mostly in his left hand, raising them to his eyes now and then as if they were a lorgnette. It is the sort of mannerism that could have been acquired through his work as a university lecturer. He wore a pale blue shirt with a dark blue cardigan, white slacks and espadrilles. On the desk I noticed a box of cellulose tissues. As he came forward he stuffed a used one into his shirt pocket.
He shook my hand warmly. ‘Delighted to see you, Dr Castillo. Truly a pleasure.’ He smelled faintly of cigar smoke and an eau-de-toilette.
As I made the appropriate responses he patted my shoulder and held up his glasses to look me over.
‘I can recognize you, I think,’ he went on, ‘but only just.’
‘From old photographs, Don Manuel?’
‘Not at all. We have in fact met before, though I would be most surprised if you had remembered.’ He led me to a sofa and we sat down sideways so as to face one another.
‘It was at the Mass for your father,’ he said.
‘Oh.’
‘Yes. You behaved with great dignity and calm. I have a son who is now just about your age then. He is reasonably
serious, I think – indeed he has hopes of being accepted as a student by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology – but he has never had to face that kind of situation.’
‘We all hope that he never has to, Don Manuel.’
I was also hoping fervently that he would now drop the subject, but he seemed determined to pursue it.
‘Naturally in your case the Mass was only one of a series of ordeals. There had been the fracas at the airport and then the funeral, to say nothing of the student demonstrations and the street fighting. The Mass was in the nature of a culmination. That is why I would have been surprised if you had remembered our meeting, even though poor Hermanos introduced us. I had the impression, admirably calm and dignified though you were, that you were beyond feeling very much that day, that your senses were by then completely numb.’
‘Not entirely, Don Manuel, though I was certainly preoccupied. There had been talk by the army commander of forbidding a public Mass for my father. My mother was deeply disturbed by the threat. The Mass was permitted only after she and I had agreed that we, the whole family, would quietly leave the country immediately afterwards. The agreement was negotiated on our behalf by a man my mother trusted, a man we believed to have been my father’s friend.’
‘Ah yes. The trusted, the ever-faithful Acosta!’ The sneer in his voice was more weary than bitter. ‘
Just for a few weeks, Doña Concepcion, until passions have cooled.
I can almost hear him saying it. Naturally your mother believed him. I’ve no doubt you believed him too. And who could blame you? How could she, how could you, have known that tricking the Castillo family into exile was just part of a larger plan of repression and that the total proscription of our party had already been decided upon? Let me tell you, Doctor, I was deceived myself at first.’
His tone and raised eyebrows invited me to question the statement.
‘You were, Don Manuel?’
‘At first, yes. For a few hours anyway. You were not alone, believe me. The loss of our Party leader at that juncture was a demoralizing blow. But it should not have deprived all of us of our senses. If the Party committee had acted promptly and cohesively, if instead of merely threatening a general strike, the committee had called one instantly and held to its resolve during those three decisive days, things would have been very different. But instead of acting they debated, instead of attacking they listened to what they deluded themelves into believing were the voices of reason.’
He shook his head sorrowfully and leaned back on the sofa arm as if better to support the weight of his memories. After a moment he cleared his throat.
‘I at least had some excuse,’ he said. ‘When the major crime was committed, at the moment of the assassination, I was in New York. I will never forget it. There was a television news flash. The announcer didn’t get your father’s name quite right and I called the Washington embassy hoping to find that it was all a mistake. But no. So, for most of those critical three days I was in airport lounges waiting for flights delayed by the weather, or in piston-engined planes missing connecting flights which had taken off on time. When I at last arrived back in the capital the damage was already done. Not that my presence, my lone voice, would have made much difference. We of the true left were already thought of as intransigent doctrinaires. But even one small voice can inject doubt if nothing more. As it was, attending the Memorial Mass with the rest of the committee was my last official act as a member of that august body. Forty-eight hours later most of us were fugitives. The rest, including the faithful Acosta, were busy making their peace with reaction.’
He tried unsuccessfully to repress a sneeze. It seemed a good moment to remind him that I was there in my professional capacity.
‘Well,’ I said briskly, ‘most of them are dead now, and from natural causes.’
‘Including the faithful Acosta, yes. What did he die of, Doctor? Do you know?’
‘I’ve no idea. Except in accident cases, the newspapers here don’t usually give medical details when they report a death.’
‘You weren’t curious enough to enquire?’
‘No, Don Manuel. My medical curiosity is mostly confined to living patients. You, for example. I can hear that you have some sort of sinus congestion. Is that what you consulted Dr Massot about?’
The name did the trick. He sat up instantly. ‘Don’t talk to me about that fool. He came, authorized by that policeman of yours, to make a general examination. In passing I told him I’d had a stuffed-up head ever since I came here.’