The Three Sentinels (17 page)

The days which followed were the worst that Cabo Desierto had given him. When the boycott committee accepted his proposals congratulations had poured in from London and the Capital, but now the
high hopes had led to nothing. Only force could shift Rafael Garay and his toughs from the key installations of the field and the Three Sentinels. Delgado was probably right in maintaining that the
militants would dwindle away, but meanwhile he was helpless.

Disappointment was at its most bitter on the field. He was blamed for not calling in the army. Gateson had let slip the plan to empty the Charca and whispered that Mat himself had prevented it.
Even Ray Thorpe was impatient and for the first time in favour of machine guns. None of them could honestly say ‘I told you so’, but the four words haunted his loneliness as if they
had.

It was with a feeling of holiday that he joined González at the port to observe the arrival of the
Rosita
and that watch-repairing El Vicario. The operation was of minor
importance compared to starting the flow of the Three Sentinels down to the sea but at least provided an illusion of action. At four in the afternoon he had seen from his ocean grandstand of a
window a black speck on the horizon which had to be the fishing boat. When he reached the customs shed she was in sight at sea level, and ten minutes later the thudding of the Diesel could be
heard. So silent was the town that he could detect the beat echoing back from the sharp slope of the ridge. Human beings were sweating out the last hour of siesta; their stillness emphasised the
other interminable silence of the field and its machinery.

Rosita
rounded the breakwater with two alarming rolls, like a drunken sailor keeping balance and a purposeful course in spite of his legs, and tied up close under the customs shed, her
deck just below the level of the quay. Three men began to discharge her boxes of fish. It was not a big catch, but seemed to be very fresh and of a quality better suited to the Capital than Cabo
Desierto. Meanwhile the master walked into the port offices to report his arrival and telephone the buyers in the market.

Watching through the window of González’s office, Mat remarked:

‘A retired naval officer who deliberately hasn’t shaved for two days?’

‘Possibly. But two of the crew must be genuine fishermen. Last time the fish was bought, not caught, and they hadn’t enough ice.’

‘Which is the expert?’

‘He must be the little one.’

That was obvious when one looked closely at the three men sitting on the edge of the empty fish hold. Though the slenderness of the Spaniard, the colour of his skin and his bared, muscular arms
were not very different from those of his mestizo companions, he lacked their softness of outline. He was tense rather than thin all the way from forehead to feet.

‘You had better go back now, Don Mateo, before the buyers arrive.’

Certainly it would be wise. If things went badly wrong and the General Manager was down at the port for no apparent reason, everyone would assume that he was implicated.

‘How long will El Vicario take?’

‘He will go up after dark and should be back in an hour.’

‘They’ll be seen loading the boxes on board.’

‘It doesn’t matter. With all four at work it should not take them more than three minutes—then cast off and away!’

‘What will you say the boxes are, if asked?’

‘Ice from the market in their own containers. That’s what they told me and why should I bother?’

‘A damned unlikely story!’

‘Of course. So people will assume it is one of my rackets and settle for that.’

‘Let me know as soon as
Rosita
is clear! I shall be at my house.’

Mat drove back to headquarters and signed a mass of correspondence, none of which had anything to do with oil or the men who refused to handle it. Law, houses, land—he might as well, he
thought, have been a smart estate agent flogging properties for retirement. Sun-drenched plot with uninterrupted views over the Pacific. Money back if it rains more than once a year.
Company’s water, provided organised labour doesn’t blow it up.

‘Pilar, do you consider all your police to be crooks?’

‘You know they are.’

‘Can you think of any racket that González could possibly be in?’

‘He hasn’t much opportunity at Cabo Desierto, but I suppose we could frame him if we have to.’

Not much of grandee ethics in that! Well, she must be excused for the sake of the unquestioning loyalty in the ‘we’. He felt a sudden access of pity for poor, cynical González
who saw so clearly that in any dubious intrigue he could be left holding the baby. The captain’s unreserved trust, which had often seemed a mere frightened choice of the right protector, was
really a great compliment.

He went home after dark and relaxed over his long evening drinks on the verandah where he was within easy reach of the telephone. It refused to ring before, during or after dinner. Several times
he left the table and went out into the darkness to look for
Rosita
’s triangle of lights which should be visible when she was a mile or so out from Cabo Desierto.

Pepe came in to clear away the coffee bearing a message from Amelia that she hoped there was nothing wrong with the steak of barracuda in his favourite
salsa verde.

‘I told her that your mind was on business and you were always looking out of the window,’ Pepe said. ‘But she had to know.’

Business, yes. No feeling of holiday now. This secret removal of the gelignite and its temptations was vital to success.

At last he was sure that he saw
Rosita
, though there were no points of red or green. The white masthead light vanished as soon as spotted—only the phosphorescence, perhaps, of
some great tail flicking the water. Soon afterwards González called to say that their friend was not yet back. Underlying his discretion there seemed to be a note of worry.

It was nearly midnight when González himself came up to the house with the news that the truck was back, empty, in the same obscure lane from which it had been taken. He could not
understand it. Nothing should have gone wrong.

Inocencio had lived up to his name. He drifted off about seven o’clock, went to the fishing crews’ usual taverna for a drink and a snack, walked up the main street in pretended
search of amusement and drifted down again to the port. There González intercepted him and discreetly slipped him the extra payment which had been gratefully received. The man appeared
trustworthy and confident.

After leaving González he walked past the parked truck without looking at it and then, as if struck by its convenience, turned back into the darkness between the truck and a blank wall
where he had a leisurely pee. That finished without any disturbance or any passer-by, he jumped straight into the cab of the truck and was away. A police patrol concealed near the road junction
between the ridges reported that he had driven through to the old field. That was all González needed to know and he had withdrawn the patrol.

‘What have you done with the truck?’

‘Put it in with my police vehicles and been all over it.’

‘Any sign of a struggle?’

‘None yet. All I can tell you so far is that he never loaded the explosives. There are oil and gravel on the floor of the truck, but no marks of boxes.’

‘And the boat?’

‘Still in port. The master is protesting about staying overnight, but I have told him that he must.’

Mat gave orders that in the morning the old field had to be thoroughly searched by the police. Secrecy could no longer be preserved, for somebody must know exactly what they were seeking. That
somebody might be an unexpected Union agent or Rafael Garay or even Gateson. But there was an excellent excuse for the rest of Cabo Desierto. The Company and the police were looking for the body of
Lorenzo.

Under some boards. That was the only clue. Ray Thorpe, let into the secret of the real object of the search, was sure that he had never ordered any hole to be boarded over; but anyone could have
made a quick, strong job of it with duckboards or planks from shed floors and drilling platforms. He would have a record of any sizeable object or engine which had been removed during the actual
closing down of the field. Before that, when the field had been in full production, swoppings and shiftings of machinery had been of almost weekly occurrence. His diary might be helpful and he
would look, but he would probably come up with scores of possible holes.

Without any rain to wear away the ground, the year-old footmarks of Thorpe’s gangs remained much as they had been made. They could be deep in oily sand or stand out on a rock as if they
had been painted black or leave a vaguely foot-shaped mat of gravel and oil. There were impressions of a child’s foot confirming the presence of Chepe. He seemed to have been accompanied by
an adult and to have wandered about among the ranks of the thirties. That this was the right quarter was corroborated by prints of Lorenzo’s boots, the soles of which were known and entirely
different from the rubber boots or canvas shoes of the oil workers. There were signs that he had once walked from the road into the fifties. Chepe, too, had once gone some way in that direction.
But there was no doubt at all that their main search had been in and around the thirties.

Inocencio Vélez García, alias El Vicario, had disappeared as completely as Lorenzo. To Mat it seemed highly probable that he was at large and planning to get clear of Cabo Desierto
by the overland route for good reasons of his own. He was the sort of wiry, desertworthy fellow who would take the risk, especially if he had a partner ready to ride out from the Capital to meet
him with food and water. He might of course have been murdered, but it would be a more chancy business to deal with him than with Lorenzo. As a freelance
dinamitero
who had managed to
reach the age of 41 he was likely to have escaped more bullets than the three which hit him and to have left the odd corpse behind in the process.

There was nothing for it but to give up the search. The master of
Rosita
refused to wait any longer. His orders to be away before dawn were precise and his pay depended on obeying. All
he knew was that he had to land a passenger and take him off again with a load of boxes during the night. Mat damned his employers for being over-discreet. One could see their point. If
Rosita
ever came under suspicion, any investigation would soon bring to light who had twice chartered her and why.

From the garden of the Farm Manager’s house the black oil field was out of sight. The landscape visible through a windbreak of tall eucalyptus was divided as neatly as
any flag into blue ocean, green farmland, yellow mountain. The only reminder that Industry existed, silent and on the defensive, was the cluster of tanks beyond the port, their steel tops flashing
like round shields in the sun.

Rafael was a frequent visitor, quick to learn and eager to ask the questions of the ignorant which to Manuel Uriarte often seemed more penetrating—if one really tried to give an honest
answer—than those of experienced farmers. The agronomist could not approve his obstinacy but understood it, being himself full of compassion towards his fellows, most of whom would all their
lives be deprived of his own utter satisfaction with his work.

‘You are not reasonable, Rafael.’

‘This is our home. And, thanks to you, we can live without wages.’

That to Rafael was the point upon which there could be no surrender. Revenge upon the Company, yes—but justified by his nebulous vision of a peaceful return to what men were meant to do.
In Cabo Desierto could be a society of quiet growth, of creation in emptiness to fill the other emptiness left behind by Catalina. A majority did not agree with him. Well, but in the end it must.
Here could be happiness, a living lesson of what would happen if one rejected companies and treachery and cowardice. That only Capitalism or the State could have financed Uriarte’s artificial
paradise he understood, but there was no reason why the workers should not take it over.

‘The Company has promised that anyone who wants to live off the land may do so.’

‘The Company is dead. We have killed it as it killed our women.’

‘There is always Don Mateo.’

‘True, there is Don Mateo. But this is a question of principle.’

One single man stood in his way. The Company was powerless and the State afraid. That outside world, against which Gil used to warn him, could be defied, for no one else was prepared to use
armed force if the government was doubtful. Don Mateo had won the first round but could not win the next. Rafael had no resentment against that single man, that courteous single man, only against
Gil Delgado who had sold out for the sake of his own importance.

‘Reasonable!’ Rafael spat the word. ‘To you Delgado is reasonable!’

‘Yes, Rafael, I think he is.’

‘And what have you to say to treachery?’

‘Man, I am talking of his policy not his character.’

‘An absurdity! What a man is and what he does are the same.’

‘But not in politics, Rafael.’

‘This is not politics. This is war.’

‘All wars end in peace some time.’

‘But that is all I ask. Peace and no oil!’

Down the black bar of the road which separated the farm from desolation something white glided in and out of sight, changing rapidly from a determined gull to a figure bent over the handle bars
of a bicycle and pedalling fast through the heat of the late afternoon.

‘Someone for you,’ Uriarte said.

‘Why for me?’

‘Here we grow things. There is nothing so important that it cannot wait for the sun to pass.’

Antón, soaked in sweat, jumped off his borrowed bicycle, greeted Uriarte and panted to Rafael that
Rosita
was in port again.

‘What have you done?’

‘Set a watch to see what she unloads. The skipper does not look to me like a fisherman.’

‘A favour, Don Manuel! Would you drive us to the town?’

‘So much hurry for fish?’