Authors: David Downing
The composition of the Mexican resistance had become clearer over the last few hours. It was now known that the official army had retreated up the railway line, along with all but one locomotive, and set up camp some ten miles outside
the city. Before leaving, its commander—or someone else in authority—had seen fit to free the city’s prisoners, both political and criminal, after offering them reprieves in exchange for their taking up arms against the foreign invader. It was several hundred of these
rayados
along with a similar number of ordinary citizens and a small force of naval cadets, who had taken the fight to the Americans.
There was much debate as to what would happen next, but as far as McColl could see, there was only one real possibility. The Americans could hardly retreat with their tails between their legs, and they certainly couldn’t stay where they were, so they had to take the city. The only real question was whether they had enough men to do it straightaway or would need to wait for reinforcements. After joining several curious journalists in a cautious reconnaissance of the Mexican-held portion of the city center, McColl found himself hoping it would be the former. Most of the fighters busily building barricades seemed happy to talk to gringo journalists, but the frequent screams of invisible women and the sound of gunfire far from the known front line suggested that more than a few
rayados
were making up for time lost in prison.
Back in his hotel room, McColl pondered his own course of action. With the Hotel Alemán now behind American lines, he had no way of monitoring von Schön and his activities. All he could do was sit tight until the fighting was over, and the Diligencias at least offered safety in numbers.
He went to bed with the curtains drawn, but every now and then a ship’s searchlight would sweep across the window, like a monster in a child’s dream, trying to force its way in.
He was woken by the sound of his window shattering. The curtains had caught the splintered glass, but the bullet had buried itself deep in the plaster of the opposite wall, a few feet to his left.
He had slept later than he meant to, and it was fully light outside. Knowing that it was foolish but utterly unable to resist the temptation, he slowly edged an eye around the window frame for a look at the plaza. Several uniformed figures were running along the inside of the municipal palace’s arcade while puffs of smoke erupted on the roof. There was no sign of movement in the square itself.
As he pulled back his head, he heard people running past his door. The footsteps receded, and by the time he cracked open the door, the corridor was empty. But now he heard movement above—whoever they were, they were on the hotel roof. Mexican fighters, most likely, lying in wait for the Americans. If so, his wake-up bullet had been the first of many.
He dressed hurriedly, keeping well away from the window. Downstairs, he found that foreign guests had occupied the kitchen and were cooking their own breakfasts. Most of the Mexican staff had obviously decided that this was an excellent day to take off, and McColl found the mood reminiscent of a children’s party abandoned by parents. It was only when one of the large front windows of the restaurant exploded inward that hysteria turned to panic and everyone tumbled down the stairs to the basement.
They could still hear the rattle of gunfire down there, and a few minutes later there were several louder booms, which one old American gentleman identified as naval guns. “They’re shelling the city,” he announced, with an enthusiasm few of his fellow residents seemed to share.
One thunderous explosion nearby caused a shower of plaster from the basement ceiling, but the big guns soon fell silent and all they could hear in the basement was the clatter of machine guns and rifle fire. They had been there about an hour when an American sailor in coffee-stained whites appeared at the top of the steps and told them that the building was almost secure. “We’re just mopping up on the roof.”
After twenty minutes they were given permission to go back upstairs but were warned against leaving the hotel. Purely out of curiosity, McColl tagged along with a couple of real journalists intent on visiting the roof, and he almost wished he hadn’t. Around twenty Mexican corpses were spread across the wide expanse, most missing sizable chunks of their heads. There were almost as many wounded, and two American women were doing what they could to help, tearing up sheets for bandages and offering a few words of comfort.
“We tried to surrender,” one man was saying in his native Spanish. “We threw down our rifles, but first they shouted and then they shot us.”
The woman didn’t understand what the man was saying, but one of the journalists did. “What did they shout?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” the man said. “They shout in English.”
It was probably “Put up your hands,” McColl thought. And when they didn’t—bang.
In the plaza the fighting seemed over, but gunfire was still echoing across the city. There was one battle going on in the streets behind the hotel, another in the opposite direction, out toward the harbor. The Americans were clearly advancing, but far from having it all their own way.
As one of the women pointed out, the rising heat made it necessary to move both wounded and dead. The corpses would soon start to smell, and the audience of
zopilotes
would swell still further. As the only refuse collectors the city possessed, Veracruz’s vultures were protected by law and seemed well aware of that fact. Several flew over to perch on the parapet and were driven away only by a concerted flailing of arms.
Once sufficient volunteers had been gathered, the wounded were carried down to the restaurant and laid out in lines to await a doctor. The corpses were wrapped up in sheets, brought down, and left in a pile in the plaza until a cart could be found to take them away. It was a rotten job, and once they
had finished, McColl joined several of his fellow bearers in sharing a bottle of the hotel’s brandy.
With nothing better to do, he went back up to the roof alone, thinking to follow the course of the battle. The machine guns had fallen silent, leaving only the occasional crack of a rifle—a Mexican sniper perhaps, or an angry American avenging a comrade. Veracruz was an occupied city.
In the plaza below, an incredible sight met his eyes—a posse of marines bearing musical instruments were setting themselves up in the central bandstand. A few minutes more and “The Stars and Stripes Forever” was rolling out across the plaza. McColl listened for a few moments, shook his head in wonder, and zigzagged his way to the steps leading down between the pools of congealing blood.
There was a de facto curfew that Wednesday evening, but by Thursday morning the occupiers were eagerly encouraging the resumption of normal life. McColl took to the streets somewhat gingerly, the pistol from San Francisco wedged in the small of his back. But the sporadic gunfire seemed far away, and most shops and cantinas were lifting their shutters, albeit with some trepidation.
The Hotel Alemán was open for business, a third family member behind the desk. The son and father of the two he had met, McColl guessed, as the man examined the usual photograph. “The bird lover,” he finally said in Spanish. “Señor Schneider. He checked out an hour ago.”
“Do you know where he’s going?”
The man shook his head. “But he asked about boats to Guatemala. A paradise for birds, he said.”
A likely story, McColl thought, handing over some pesos. Outside on the pavement, he stopped to consider his next move. Where had the German really gone?
One bit of news had reached the hotel the previous
evening—the
Ypiranga
had arrived that afternoon with Huerta’s arms shipment, but the Americans had refused to allow its unloading. As far as McColl knew, the German freighter was still at anchor in the outer harbor—might von Schön be on board?
It would have been difficult to reach the
Ypiranga
when the harbor was swarming with American boats. It would be hard to get anywhere, come to that. There were no passenger ships leaving Veracruz, no trains. The Americans would be watching the roads out of town, and there was nowhere the German could walk to.
No, McColl decided—von Schön was still in Veracruz. He would have to conduct another search, starting with the other hotels.
He walked across to the Hotel Terminal and immediately struck gold. Señor Tubach had checked in only that morning. A journalist, of course, all the way from Vienna.
McColl went back to the Diligencias, where several foreign patrons were sitting outside lamenting their lukewarm drinks. Strenuous efforts had been made to repair the shell-inflicted damage to the hotel’s ice plant, but all to no avail—replacement parts would have to be ordered from the makers in Chicago.
The suffering some people had to endure!
The waiter on duty was the one McColl wanted to see. A youth of around sixteen, Ernesto had been one of the hotel’s few employees to turn up for work on the previous day—he couldn’t afford to lose a day’s wages. During their confinement in the basement, he and McColl had talked for a while, and the boy’s natural intelligence and fervent ambition had been only too evident. Now McColl asked Ernesto if he knew of anyone who might like to earn some extra pesos keeping an eye on a rival reporter. “Someone with a brain,” he insisted. “Someone as clever as you are.”
A couple of hours later, Ernesto brought his cousin Hugo
up to McColl’s room. He looked about fourteen, with floppy black hair and impish eyes, and it didn’t take McColl long to work out that the boy was sharp enough for the job at hand. After showing him von Schön’s photograph and telling him where the German was staying, he outlined the task: “I want to know where he goes, what he does, who he meets. But he must not realize that he’s being followed.”
Hugo nodded sagely, and after several minutes’ bargaining the two fees were agreed upon—one for him, one for his agent, Ernesto.
After lunch at the hotel, McColl joined a group of journalists keen to examine the destruction wrought on the naval academy. The damage done by the five-inch guns of the
Chester
and the
San Francisco
seemed almost slight from the outside—cornices chipped away, several windows blown in—but once one was inside, the full force of the onslaught became apparent. The bodies of the young cadets had been removed, but there were bloodstains everywhere and what looked like pieces of flesh stuck to the upper walls. The cadets’ possessions, bedding, and furniture were strewn over the floor in broken profusion, like so much bloody confetti. Every now and then, a recognizable object would meet the eye—a hairbrush, a glove, the page of a letter. In almost every room, a sign had been posted forbidding the taking of photographs, and it wasn’t hard to see why.
Back in the Diligencias bar, he sat with a beer and listened to the journalists swap tales of “overzealous action” by the occupying forces. Resistance had not been expected, and the shock of losses had led many to lash out blindly at the first available Mexican. Women and children had died in their parlors because snipers had perched on their roofs.
Not surprisingly, the local Mexican politicians had refused that morning’s American offer to resume control of civic
affairs. The national constitution forbade them from serving invaders, they had told the American commander. Which might be true but was only half the story—they knew very well that their people would never forgive them.
Had reports of American excesses filtered beyond the city? No one seemed to know. The mere fact of the American occupation had convulsed opinion in Mexico City, where the embassy was besieged by demonstrators, and white foreigners with even an ounce of sense were keeping to their hotels. Huerta, however, was willing to let them leave, and a first trainload of Americans, Britons, and Germans had reportedly departed the capital that morning. The American authorities in Veracruz were sending a train out to meet them, at the point six miles from town where the Mexican army had torn up the rails.
Next morning McColl took to the town on his own. The night before had been significantly quieter, and now an hour would often pass without someone somewhere firing a gun, but he still felt safer knowing he had one in his belt and kept a vigilant eye on the roofs and windows above.
On the far side of the battered Hotel Oriente, he came upon a group of off-duty marines teaching Mexican children how to play baseball. Marines and children were all smiles, which was more than could be said for the watching Mexican adults, who were tight-lipped to a man. McColl found it hard to blame them—as he walked through the streets, the ravages of one day’s fighting were everywhere. Only a handful of buildings had been destroyed, but hundreds had been damaged, and very few walls had escaped being scarred by bullets. Several bore the slogan
MUERAN LOS GRINGOS
.
There were funeral processions that morning. He watched one from a respectful—and safe—distance, was moved by the dignity of the mourners and the melancholy song of a
trumpet, and then arrived back at the plaza just as the marine band began stomping its way through another slice of patriotic bombast. He would have murdered them all if he could, so it wasn’t hard to imagine what the Mexicans were thinking.
Up in his room a few minutes later, he was looking out through the star-shaped hole in his window when he spotted a familiar figure crossing the plaza below. Von Schön was wearing a white tropical suit and hat, with a small pouch on a strap strung like a bandolier across one shoulder. What was in it—binoculars?
The German had company, a portly Mexican in high-heeled boots who was jabbing the air with his fingers as if dispensing an explanation.
And there was young Hugo, ambling along behind them at a very sensible distance, gazing from side to side like a peon new to the city.
The three of them walked on past the bandstand and into the street at the bottom that ran past the Hotel México.
Hugo was only a few minutes late for their six-o’clock appointment. He had followed Señor Tubach when he went out the previous afternoon, stood guard outside his hotel once he’d retired for the evening, and followed him again today.