Authors: David Downing
“It’s almost endearing,” McColl muttered.
“It’s madness.”
McColl had to smile. “Will Huerta bend the knee?”
“I doubt it.”
“So what will Wilson do then?”
Wethers shrugged. “I don’t know, and I doubt if he does either. He’s our number-one problem, not the German.”
“Well, maybe they’ll send me to Washington next,” McColl said, getting up. “If any messages come for me, I’m staying at the Hotel del Centro.”
“Where’s that?”
“Just off the plaza on Calle Arista.”
“Oh, yes, I think I remember it. You’ll find better places on the plaza.”
“And be more noticeable.”
“Ah, yes, the cloak-and-dagger. I’m sure there’re plenty of Oxford chaps in your line of work.”
McColl shook the moist hand again and wiped it off on his trousers as he walked back down to the street. The temperature was rising steeply now, but the air was clear, humidity low. He needed a hat, he decided, and headed back toward the plaza, where’d he seen them for sale.
Where should he start? After what he had heard from Wethers, Cumming’s fears seemed exaggerated, at least in the short run. But McColl was acutely aware of the gaps in his own knowledge. He had no idea how easy it was to sabotage an oil field or how long it would take to get the oil flowing again. He
presumed the Royal Navy had stockpiles of the stuff, but that might be giving it too much credit.
He had to find out what von Schön was doing. He had to find von Schön.
The hotels were the logical place to start, and after buying a fetching straw hat, he worked his way around the plaza. The desk clerk in the third and plushest hotel recognized the photograph. After pocketing the proffered pesos, he said that Señor von Schön had checked out three days ago, and when McColl looked doubtful, he brought out the register to prove it. The clerk had no idea where the man had gone but would gladly look out for him, if sightings were to be rewarded.
McColl assured him they would be and continued around the plaza, on the off chance that the German had simply switched hotels. By noon he had visited every establishment he could find in the vicinity. Von Schön, it seemed, was gone.
After lunch he tried the station, where a train had reportedly left for the capital two or three days before, but either no one there had seen his man or all those he asked were too annoyed at having their siesta disturbed to admit it. Seeing their point, he went back to his room and dozed for a couple of hours.
That evening he worked his way around the hotels again, this time searching for von Schön’s fellow countrymen. He eventually found a couple who claimed to be water-treatment specialists, just as von Schön had done in Tsingtau. These two, he decided after several minutes’ conversation, really were what they claimed. And more to the point, they had met von Schön, the visiting botanist. He had gone into the interior—collecting specimens, they assumed, although they didn’t know what or where—but they expected him back before long. A few days, he had said.
McColl was up at dawn and spent an hour on the roof writing two cables—a brief one to Cumming reporting his
arrival, a longer one to Tim Athelbury, apologizing for his nonappearance, announcing his resignation from the firm, and suggesting that Mac be given his job.
After breakfasting at the same café, he called first at the vice-consulate. Wethers was pleased to see him and happy to pass on McColl’s request that someone from the Mexico City embassy check the major hotels for von Schön. “They won’t like it,” Wethers said with something close to relish. “But they’ll have to do it.”
McColl moved on to the town’s telegraph office. This, as he’d hoped, was a basic affair, with only one operator sending and receiving at any given time. The incumbent’s name was Alberto Ruiz, and as McColl soon discovered, he ran the office with his brother, Diego. After paying for his two cables and saying how much he liked Mexico, he asked to meet Alberto and his brother after the office closed. “I have a business proposition for you,” he said, “and I’ll buy you both a beer while you think it over.”
They met in the plaza at seven, and neither brother needed much convincing. Alberto stared hard at the photo of von Schön and repeated McColl’s proposition out loud to confirm his understanding. “If this man sends a cable, you want a copy. And for each cable we copy, you pay us ten American dollars.”
“
Sí
.”
“Okay.” He passed the picture to his brother, who studied it for what seemed an age, then shyly nodded his acquiescence.
McColl walked back to his hotel feeling he’d done all he could. If von Schön had gone to the capital, the embassy should find him. And if he was out there making anti-British deals with González, then he’d surely wait until he got back to Tampico before reporting his success to Berlin.
Over the next three days, McColl’s confidence slowly eroded. Von Schön did not check back in to his hotel, and
there was no word from either Mexico City or the brothers Ruiz. It was possible that the embassy staff had been too busy attending social functions to do the requested chore, possible that Pablo and Diego had reconsidered their involvement in international espionage. But he doubted it. As the days went by, he became increasingly worried that the German was stirring up trouble somewhere else.
Waiting for word certainly lengthened the days. He explored as much of the town as seemed safe, but there wasn’t much in the way of sights—a relatively new cathedral, a redbrick customs house that looked far too British for its tropical surroundings. The intricate wrought-iron balconies gave the streets a touch of class and also came from Blighty, but being an actual white man was obviously becoming something of a liability. Not many minutes went by without a malevolently whispered “
Gringo
” pursuing him up the street.
Down by the river, he watched small groups of foreigners being evacuated, and more were doubtless leaving from the various oil-company wharves, but despite the growing antipathy toward outsiders, he never felt really under threat. Gunfire was often audible, though it never seemed to come any nearer, and one morning’s unexpected shelling of the northern suburbs by federal gunboats was not repeated. As far as the rest of the town was concerned, business went on as usual.
He devoted many hours to watching the plaza for von Schön, nursing
cervezas
and improving his Spanish with a copy of
Don Quixote
a fellow hotel guest had left behind. He wrote several letters to Caitlin that he tore up, finally settling for a simple statement of how much he missed her. How long the missive would take to reach the Mexican capital, let alone New York City, didn’t bear thinking about.
The vice-consulate received daily news updates from the embassy, so he dropped in at lunchtime each day to find out what was happening in the wider world. On Wednesday,
Wethers informed him that Huerta had offered Wilson a compromise, on Thursday that Wilson had turned it down. On Friday the news came through that the Americans had delivered an ultimatum.
“Threatening what?” McColl wanted to know.
“It’s not been made public,” Wethers said, “but they’re planning to blockade Veracruz.”
“Why not Tampico?”
Wethers shrugged. “Too close to the fighting, perhaps. If Huerta’s enemies take it, then a blockade won’t do
him
any damage. And Veracruz is the country’s biggest port.”
As McColl walked back to the plaza, it crossed his mind that von Schön might have headed in that direction. But why? What interest did the Germans have in Veracruz?
How would he get there? McColl walked on down to the railway station and consulted the beautiful map of the national network that a local Michelangelo had painted on the booking hall’s ceiling. Veracruz was only 250 miles down the coast from Tampico, but a rail passenger between the two would have thrice that distance to cover, taking in not only Mexico City but several towns farther north whose names he recognized from war reports. Not a trip to take lightly.
Lying in bed that night, he decided to give it another couple of days and then seek advice from Cumming. Next moment, or so it seemed, his shoulder was being shaken and a voice was urging him to stir himself. The person above smelled far less fragrant than Hsu Ch’ing-lan, and he recognized the clammy hand.
“I’ve had news from the embassy,” Wethers told him. “There’s a ship named the
Ypiranga
heading for Veracruz with a cargo of German arms for Huerta. It’ll probably be there on Monday or Tuesday.”
“The American blockade,” McColl murmured, hoisting himself up on one shoulder.
“Precisely. And it might explain why your friend von Schön hasn’t turned up. He’s probably waiting for the ship in Veracruz.”
McColl swung himself out of bed and went to pull back the sheet that served as a curtain. The sky above was blue, the street below still in shadow. “How the hell do I get there?” he asked. “I checked out the trains yesterday, and even if they’re running, it would probably take a week.”
“There’s no other way that I know of.”
“What about the roads?” he asked, although he knew the answer already.
“There aren’t any. Not to the south, anyway. They’re just cart tracks.”
McColl nodded. In the unlikely event that an automobile was available, his chances of driving one that sort of distance over unsurfaced roads without a breakdown were negligible. He could probably hire a cart and horses, but the latter would need frequent rests or changing, not to mention food and water.
“I don’t even know how you’d get across the river,” Wethers was saying. “Last I heard, the ferry was out of service.”
The mention of a ferry gave McColl an idea. There had been at least one Royal Navy ship among the flotilla standing guard at the mouth of the Pánuco. It was beyond cheeky, but what was the harm in asking? The ship had to be somewhere, and maybe his presence in Veracruz was worth the price of a run down the coast.
Wethers laughed at the suggestion but agreed to give it a try. He did caution McColl against expecting a swift response—it was already Saturday afternoon in London, so they could hardly expect a reply before Monday morning. McColl feared even that might be optimistic, but for once the empire was firing on all cylinders, and a breathless Wethers came rushing up to McColl’s table in the plaza soon after
noon on Sunday, inviting him to pack his duds and hurry on down to the dock.
He looked as surprised as McColl felt. They shook hands for the last time, and McColl ran back up to the Hotel del Centro, eliciting mutters of “
Loco
” from most of the Mexicans he passed. He rammed all his possessions into the suitcase, sat on it, and finally managed to fasten the buckle.
The river, when he reached it, looked depressingly empty, and he had a sudden mental picture of himself, the lonely British agent, hopelessly stranded in some steamy foreign backwater. He was still admiring this romantic portrait—“Far From the Country He Serves” seemed a splendid title—when a tender rounded the distant bend of the river and headed in toward the wharf. A sailor grabbed McColl’s suitcase and helped him aboard, and soon they were gliding back downriver.
None of the crew seemed interested in conversation, but he did catch several curious looks. The empty banks and idle wharves looked even more desolate in daylight, and reaching the sparkling ocean was almost a relief. The light cruiser
Glasgow
was waiting about a mile offshore, but most of the ships he’d seen the week before had left, presumably for Veracruz.
The cruiser’s retractable steps had been lowered for his embarkation. “A king for a day,” he murmured to himself as he climbed toward the deck. The captain was waiting to welcome him aboard, a tall man of around forty with bright blue eyes in a weather-beaten face. If his opening remarks about running a taxi service might have been mistaken for resentment, the boyish smile with which he delivered them ruled out any such implication.
“Sorry to make work for you,” McColl replied in similar tone.
“Don’t be,” the captain said. “We’re all bored stiff here and glad of the excuse. If the Yanks and Germans are planning a dustup in Veracruz, we’d love to be there to see it.”
That said, as the afternoon slipped by, his ship didn’t seem in much of a hurry. It was probably outspeeding the freighter from Galveston, but not by much, and a predicted arrival the following evening came as no great surprise.
Which was probably a blessing, McColl decided—after dark any movement from ship to shore would be that much more discreet.
The sun was dropping behind the distant mountains when the
Glasgow
edged her way into Veracruz’s outer harbor and dropped anchor beside another, larger British warship. The scattered lights of the town were visible a mile or more to the southwest, beyond a large fleet of visiting vessels.
McColl was kept waiting while the captain visited the adjacent battleship, then called in to hear the news he returned with. The American ultimatum to Huerta had expired without a satisfactory response, but no punitive action had been taken as yet, either here or in Tampico, and no one knew when or if it would be. But everyone was preparing for the worst. That evening American and other foreign civilians resident in Veracruz had been invited aboard two of the American warships berthed in the inner harbor, and a loose column of several hundred people was now strung out across the port area. The Mexican authorities were conspicuous by their absence, however, and no one seemed to know why. There were a few nervous-looking naval cadets patrolling the docks, but the soldiers, customs officials, and police had vanished. They’d either gone home to wait out the crisis or retreated out of sight to organize resistance. “You could wait until daylight or until we have a better idea what the Yanks are planning,” the captain said, “but if the balloon does go up, I doubt we’ll be staying in harbor. So if you want to slip ashore, this would probably be the moment. It’s a clear night, but at least there’s no moon, and a small dinghy shouldn’t attract any attention.”
“Do you have a map?” McColl asked.
“A chart of the harbor. but I can’t help you with the town. We’ll row you into the inner harbor, and you can pick your spot to go ashore.”