The Assignment (24 page)

“What is his name then?”

“Also they’re willing to send the delegates whom the Liberation Front nominated, that is, Count Carlos Ponti, Don Emilio Dalgren, Don José Suárez, and Colonel Joaquín Orbal. They make one reservation in that Colonel Orbal is away at the moment and they’ve been unable to contact him.”

“Did you hear what I said? What’s Sixto’s name?”

“Manuel, don’t force me to lie.”

“Were you married to him?”

For some reason he said this very violently.

“To Sixto? Married? Good God, no!”

Manuel suddenly remembered that they were not alone.
He glanced quickly at López, but he was sitting as still as usual and his face was completely expressionless.

The day was extremely hot. A white day which became whiter and whiter, hotter and hotter, which hour after hour was stretched out like a steel spring, more and more and more, toward a sudden explosion, as unforeseen as a catastrophe.

As if at a great distance, Manuel Ortega heard his secretary occasionally answering the telephone.

He moved like a sleepwalker into the bedroom and returned, frightened out of his life, with López behind him, his hand on the walnut butt and his heart thumping.

At six o’clock Ellerman came; small, thick-set, curved nose, white linen hat and narrow-striped light-colored suit. He seemed efficient and energetic, sharp, practical, and discerning. Altogether it took half an hour.

“The fundamental difficulty is naturally the time factor,” said Ellerman. “One or more of our delegates are not in the country. They must be reached, and certain preparations are necessary too. Let me see, today is Friday the fifteenth of June.”

He counted on his fingers.

“Saturday, Sunday, Monday—Wednesday then, at the very earliest Tuesday. The very, very earliest. Preferably Wednesday.”

“We’ll try for Tuesday.”

“But that’s really terribly short notice, almost absurdly so. All the preparation on the administrative level, the internal discussions. But we’ll try …”

“Let’s say we’ll open the conference on the evening of Tuesday the nineteenth at, say, seven o’clock. Then we can carry on for as many days as we like. I’m sorry I have to force you, Señor Ellerman, but the situation is extremely tense. At the breaking point.”

Breaking point, thought Manuel Ortega.

“Yes. I must make a few contacts. You’ll have definite confirmation early tomorrow morning at eight o’clock. And the other details are fixed. Written guarantees from the government in my hand on Sunday. At the latest Monday morning. A six-mile demilitarized zone. Complete truce from midnight tonight on, no arrests, no armed action, nothing. It is unfortunately easier for the right-wing extremists to reach their … militia, than for us to reach our fighting forces. At the end of the conference, forty-eight hours’ grace. And then our delegates: El Campesino and José Redondo—well, why partisan officers at a conference table? But we’ll get hold of them, and Carmen Sánchez too, of course. The main problem is Dr. Irigo. But we’ll fix that. Otherwise we’ll have to postpone the whole thing a day. But you arrange all the practical details here; quarters, printing, broadcasts, and that sort of thing. All right? Excellent. Good-by.”

Ellerman rose and picked up his briefcase. He stood looking out of the window.

“Awful lot of policemen,” he said. “Very unpleasant. And a lot of demonstrators. Are the right-wing extremists going to kill you too?”

“Yes,” said Manuel Ortega.

“Violence,” said Ellerman. “I loathe violence of all kinds. And this struggle has to be carried on in this way.”

He fell silent and poked at his nose with his little finger.

“Oh well, various people on our side take a different view of violence. There are different sets of values. If only the legal situation weren’t so depressingly obscure. You know, the Communist Party isn’t banned in the Federal Republic, but it was disbanded by the previous government, which was rather military. So the Party is, so to speak, neither permitted nor forbidden. And the Liberation Front is not officially a Communist organization. This is a matter which must be settled by the highest courts. The government can’t
decide just like that that the Liberation Front is a Communist movement—and the President knows it. Such a procedure has no legal relevance at all. When Radamek took over, he submitted both matters to the federal courts with the recommendation that the Liberation Front should be declared to be Communist but that the Communist Party should at the same time be made legal. Since then the federal courts have made no move and the matter still stands way down on their list of cases. Here they’ve got around the whole business by declaring a state of emergency and applying martial law. The only thing I know about martial law after seven years’ work is that the generals do exactly as they please. In other words, it’s not easy to be afflicted with a socialist view of life in this country.”

He stood silently for a moment, rubbing his nose. Danica, behind him, leaned against the doorpost, smiling.

“You know, our party has always been suppressed and has never been particularly strong in any of the other federal states. So the best forces were concentrated here in the south where there was a possibility of making some progress. Now many of them are dead—fine, strong people, real idealists. Only the top layer of the elite is left. The rest are stuck forever in this poor, frightful country. This miserable little feudal province with its millionaires and its military dictatorship. For a hundred years different politicians and different parties have scratched the feudal bosses’ backs to obtain backing for their election campaigns. For a hundred years career-mad generals have used this impoverished waste of stone as a springboard to the road to the presidency. And here the people have just starved and suffered and worked themselves to death. How otherwise could anyone earn millions from this desert of stones? And …”

“Wolfgang,” said Danica Rodríguez.

He started and turned around.

“Aah—I beg your pardon. Talking too much again. Getting pathetic and long-winded, forgetting myself. Lucky I’m not
going to be sitting at the conference table—what a lot of prattle—what a bad habit—well, good evening—and eight o’clock tomorrow morning …”

He backed out of the room with his briefcase in one hand and his hat in the other.

“He was a criminal lawyer to start with,” said Danica, “but he talked every minor case to death. It would take three days to settle an ordinary fight, and then of course he had his political handicap. Now he devotes himself to land cases oddly enough, and to the Party … He can be extremely efficient if he puts his mind to it.”

“I liked him.”

From outside came shouts, the roar of voices, and whistles. Somewhere a windowpane was shattered, briskly tinkling. She looked out.

“Small fry,” she said. “Mostly women and children. The police are driving them off. They’re carrying placards and streamers.”

“What does it say on the placards?”

“Death to the traitor. What did you expect?”

Manuel Ortega lay on his back in the dark with his eyes open and his right hand on the butt of his revolver. He heard Fernández moving about in the room outside. It was half past three and he had been lying like that for four hours.

He had an exhausting day’s work behind him, a long and successful day. The conference was as good as settled. People he had never seen wrote “Viva Ortega” on the walls. The truce had come into force. For everyone, but not for him.

He was afraid of the dark but dared not put on the light for fear of what he might suddenly see. He was on the alert for every noise. Had Fernández gone? No, another rustling; he was still there. But could he rely on Fernández? Or López? Or on Gómez? On Behounek? On Danica. On anyone? The answer: No.

“Everything’s wrong, Manuel,” he whispered. “Everything’s been wrong from the very beginning. You’re an official and not a hero, however much you’d like to be one. You’re no Behounek. Nor a Sixto. Now you must show them that this being normal can mean strength, not necessarily weakness. But you must inure yourself to it. You’re being ground between two millstone ideologies and you’re surrounded by experts in the art of killing. But are they also expert at dying? Does Behounek lie awake in his official bed too? Or Sixto in his cellar room? Or López at the hotel?”

After Sixto, he thought about the brown-haired Ramón and about the bruise and he was jealous. It came like a balm, but soon left him.

No one was right. Neither Dalgren nor Ellerman. Nor Behounek either. Certainly not Behounek. Nor Orestes de Larrinaga. Nor Ellerman. Not Ellerman.

Point 11. Because of the people’s low level of education, it is too early … But hadn’t every person a right to his own country irrespective of level of education? Should a small number of intruders be allowed to deprive everyone else of all their rights? On the other hand, could people born in this country be called intruders? They had, after all, grown up here, built towns and roads, created sources of energy and earning capacity …

This simplified reasoning was no help to him.

He was afraid.

Why could he not be like Behounek?

Or Sixto?

Why could he not hate with the ideological, orthodox person’s conscious and powerful hatred?

Manuel, where have your compromises landed you now? What is the formula for a compromise between fire and water? Steam. Yes, of course.

Suddenly he sat straight up in the dark. Cramped, sweaty grip on the revolver butt. Aimed in the dark.

He had heard steps and someone moving by the door.

Then rustling, chewing, and throat clearing, Fernández. He fell back against the damp pillow.

Then the voices came out of the darkness.

“You’re a traitor and to get rid of you is a matter of national interest.”

“You filthy, lousy pervert of a swine. Do you know what we do to Indian-lovers …”

“And it’s impossible to protect you, Ortega. I’m telling you this as a professional man.”

“They’re crazy; they’ll try to kill you, if only for the pleasure of it …”

“Manuel … be careful … they mean it.”

“Anyone who betrays us, does so only once …”

“It would surprise me if you were still alive this time tomorrow.”

“True, we didn’t kill the previous Resident, but that wouldn’t stop us …”

Voices, voices, voices.

At twenty to six his eyelids closed. His right hand slipped down toward the edge of the bed and the Astra slid out of his grip. It fell against the chair and then to the floor with a clatter.

A second later the door was open and Fernández had thrown himself into the room, hunched-up and wild-eyed, but several minutes had gone by before he realized what had happened.

He put the revolver back on the chair, stood in the half light, and looked down at the man on the bed. He shook his head.

“Poor devil,” he said.

Manuel Ortega heard nothing and did not move. But he was not really sleeping; he had fainted and was unconscious.

Two steps across the corridor, left hand on the doorknob, right on the revolver, ice in his heart. Fernández on the chair, cramp in his midriff.

Pale, with dark circles under his eyes, Manuel Ortega went into his office.

He avoided the window, and went on into the next room. Danica, in a red dress, thinner and better cut, lower at the neck.

Thank God. He nearly said it aloud. A normal thought for the first time in hours.

She noticed and looked up at him. She smiled, thoughtfully. He remembered his face in the mirror and knew why.

He stood behind her and had forgotten that he might suddenly die without having had time to find out what she had been about to say.

“I didn’t have a good night either,” she said. “I shouldn’t have bothered about that idiot López, but should have stayed here.”

López had implied that she might be in the way.

“Well, no one can stop me from staying tonight. I’ve even brought some things with me,” she said, kicking her bag.

“Were you alone last night?”

“Yes,” she said seriously. “When it begins to get like this, then I’m either with the person with whom it begins to get like this, or else alone.”

“Nice dress,” he said lamely.

“Mmm, but I don’t like it. I have to wear a bra with it.”

“Does it still hurt?”

“Mmm. But not so much now. And the biggest bruise in the history of erotica.”

The telephone rang.

“No,” he said. “I’ll take it.”

He felt quite strong now and wanted to test his strength. The voice was low, almost whispering, and it was impossible to make out whether it belonged to a man or a woman.

“Swine, it’ll happen soon now, within twenty-four hours, you don’t know when, how, or where, only that it’ll happen soon and it might be anywhere or any time, because I know, but I’m not saying any more except that within twenty-four …”

He slammed down the receiver. It had not gone well. The test had failed.

“Call Captain Behounek,” he snapped, and then he went out of the room.

The churning had begun again.

“What are you doing about these damned telephone calls anyway?” he said when Behounek was on the line.