Thing to Love (17 page)

“And if Don Gregorio is right?” asked Miro bluntly. “And if Ledesma is loyal? A fine mess I should land you in, supposing I arrested him or took over San Vicente Airfield! Doña Concha, you can't expect me to act on my own.”

The Presidenta looked down. When she raised her eyes again they were moist and appealing.

“Miro, I have the custom of expressing myself strongly. As man to man. But I do not want
you
to forget I am a woman. Don't be too hard and logical. I may be wrong. My husband may be wrong. We are neither of us great. We are human and able, and that's all. For you, let me put what I want this way: in this conference with Faustino Ledesma try to form an opinion which does not depend on his character at all. You ought to be able to tell on military grounds whether his proposal is sincere or not.”

“I could if Ledesma understood anything about war,” Miro replied. “But he doesn't. He understands aircraft. It's going to be difficult, Doña Concha.”

“Don't cross-examine him! Don't destroy his enthusiasm if it really exists! But weigh the evidence.”

“And what do I do if Don Gregorio believes in him and I do not?”

“Miro, you were very annoyed with me just now when I said that your obedience was a fairy tale.”

“Because I didn't know what you meant. I think I do now.”

“Hombre!
I think you do, too. You have more principles than any of us, but you reserve the right to act on them in your own way. Do you obey Jesús-María? Would you obey Don Gregorio, your commander in chief, if he interfered with you in the field? What was your intrigue with Morote? Who ordered it and how did you succeed? Miro, my dear friend, it is our good luck that your code of honor compels you to support us, but don't you sit here with the nice, innocent eyes of a Nazi general and tell me you only obey orders!”

Miro laughed. He found himself liking this hearty woman. Felicia was right. Such a character must be capable of love, domineering perhaps but rich and deep. She could be trusted to keep
a clear field for her little man while he thought out his political course and followed it with all his zig-zags and crookedness until in the end it formed a recognizably straight line.

“I shall serve Don Gregorio as best I can,” he said.

Her brilliant, slow smile showed that she appreciated the meaning beneath this outwardly solemn platitude.

“Ten o'clock and you are always punctual, Miro,” she said, getting up. “Thank you — and thank Feli for me.”

While he waited in the great corridor for Don Gregorio to receive him, Miro wondered why the devil she should thank Feli. It wasn't likely that Feli would suspect this tête-à-tête with the old dear as being anything but political. Old? Concha was a mere five years his senior. Miro rebuked himself. Because he had married a woman sixteen years younger than he was, he really had no right at all to go about thinking of himself as a dashing young major.

His first impressions on entering the President's study were of a worried Vidal and a quietly confident Ledesma. But then Ledesma always cultivated an appearance of extreme calm. Tall, dark and thin-lipped, he had something of the type of Avellana — but a very middle-class Avellana, lacking the warmth and gaiety of the
estanciero
. Miro always suspected that Faustino Ledesma had trained himself to his own conception of the leader — efficient, stern, imperturbable. Well, that was a fair enough ideal, but the infusion of a little more vitality wouldn't do it any harm.

He greeted the marshal of the Air Force with the full respect due to his high rank. Vidal watched with approval, his viceregal little beard judiciously tilted.

“And now, friends,” he said with the politician's geniality which in him was entirely natural, “in my office everyone is equal, and especially in these days when, God knows, the country needs us. Can you guess why we have disturbed your evening, Miro?”

“No, Don Gregorio. But I am very glad to see the marshal. I have not had a chance since I was ill of expressing my deep regret. If I were faced with that situation again, I should let the helicopter go.”

“They are very expensive,” said Ledesma shortly, and added with more courtesy: “But you were within your rights, General. And the pilot had to suffer for his folly.”

“The devil! Miro had no time to think,” said Vidal. “Put it that it was a demonstration of force! It is now a question of another such demonstration. If Avellana sees that his position is hopeless he must surrender — and then all at peace! I do not want vengeance. Exile for the leaders until they learn to behave themselves. And for Twelfth Cavalry Division a little discipline. Some honorable resignations — no reprisals. I can safely leave all that to Jesús-María. Now, Miro, in battle what is the decisive arm? The Air! What would you do if you had the whole Air Force of Guayanas against you?”

“Run like hell for the nearest forest,” said Miro and watched Ledesma answer with a chilly smile in which were complacency and a slight contempt for the poor defenseless forces of the flat earth.

“And on civilians the effect is still greater,” Don Gregorio went on. “The inhabitants of Vergara, the civil administration, the police — imagine their consternation when the squadrons of the legal government are roaring and diving overhead! Wouldn't it be the end of this folly?”

“You know them better than I do,” Miro replied. “But I think they would grab all available sheets and start spelling out
Viva Vidal
in the plaza.”

“And that service Marshal Ledesma has consented to do for his country!”

“Are you likely to meet any opposition?” Miro asked Ledesma. “What's on Lérida Airfield?”

“Nothing but commercial planes and the helicopters of the forest service.”

“You are too military, Miro,” said the President. “There will be no bombing, no machine-gunning of helpless citizens. It is to be a demonstration by all the five squadrons in service. All of them! That is my decision! Faustino has been very frank. Some of his officers are Avellanistas and cannot be trusted. If he left
them at San Vicente with their aircraft they might take off on their own. Two rival fleets in the clouds? No, no! No, no!”

“That is most unlikely, Don Gregorio!” Ledesma smiled. “Let us not exaggerate. No, it is a question of morale. General Kucera will agree with me. Suppose he was not sure of some of the units of the Division, he would never leave them behind in the Citadel. He would lead them out with the rest and trust to the sense of unity to bring them to their senses.”

That was reasonable enough, and Miro cordially agreed.

“There will be a heavy bill for fuel,” he said, “but it's worth it. What do you want from the garrison, Marshal? Shall I have a company standing by?”

“Unnecessary. There will be no trouble at the airfield.”

Miro congratulated him. That was the first answer which seemed at all suspicious. If he himself had been in Ledesma's position he would have liked a few reliable troops within easy striking distance. But the marshal was a proud man; it could well be a point of honor with him to trust to his own powers of leadership. In any case Doña Concha was right. The vital decision must be based on military facts, not character.

“Anything else? Ammunition?”

“War establishment. I shall make an exercise of it.”

Vidal signed and handed to the garrison commander his authority to deliver from the Citadel cannon and machine-gun belts for Guayanas's two squadrons of fighters, and bombloads for the three bomber squadrons.

“Have you nothing on the ground?” Miro asked. “I am thinking of transport.”

“Nothing but bombs and ammunition for the two training flights,” Ledesma answered.

“And when are we to be ready for your trucks?”

“The right hour to panic Vergara is about three in the afternoon,” Vidal said. “Faustino will take off at two, the day after tomorrow. But there must be no movement till dawn of any sort, nothing at all to arouse suspicion. Then I will close the roads between San Vicente Airfield and the Citadel except for military
traffic. Police will not be allowed back into town. All telephone calls must be authorized by you or Faustino personally. During the morning San Vicente will get rumors, and no more. But does it give you both enough time?”

Ledesma shook his head doubtfully but made no open objection.

“I can do it at our end,” Miro said. “All Air Force stores are marked with the numbers of the flights. If you send your transport in by the old road and the North Gate we will organize a one-way system and get them away at once by the San Vicente gate and the new road to the airfield. The surfacing is not quite finished, but it will do. Start the convoy, say, an hour before first light. The return stream will be coming on the field at dawn, and you should be able to arm at least three squadrons simultaneously.”

Ledesma thanked him warmly and with a shade of surprise. The general's mind raced at top speed over the possibilities. If he had been in Vidal's place, he too would have jumped at the chance of such a demonstration in force. Siete Dolores would surrender, and the Army would have no temptation at all to declare for Avellana. Vidal's decision was understandable and a mere garrison commander had no conceivable reason to interfere with it.

But now Ledesma was talking of difficulties which might arise on the return of the squadrons to San Vicente! Why bring that up? Weren't these minor questions of replenishment of stocks of fuel, of leave, of runways, wholly outside Vidal's competence? The President had already said twice “But as you wish, my dear Faustino.”

Why bring up these details unless to convince them both that the return of the squadrons was certain? But neither he nor Don Gregorio had shown any sign that they needed convincing. Guilty conscience? Assume for a moment that Ledesma meant to land at Lérida. What followed?

First, that the plot would be very difficult to keep secret. Knowledge of it must be strictly limited to the ranks of squadron leader and above. That was enough. Air Force discipline was good. Flight commanders and air crews would obey.

But what of the ground staff and mechanics? At Lérida there
was only the small ground staff of the civil aviation companies, and they couldn't handle the jet fighters, let alone the whole Air Force. He knew that. It was in mobilization orders. Ground crews to Lérida.

Therefore, Ledesma must plan for the servicing of his planes. Therefore, he would have to fly out at least a skeleton ground staff. How? As soon as he started to march mechanics into the bombers, Vidal would know it.

Very well, then. That move must be the absolute last. The fighters and the other two squadrons of bombers must be already in the air, out of reach of the guns of the Citadel. The third squadron then quickly lifted the essential ground staff instead of bombs.

“Order of loading?” Miro asked.

“The fighter squadrons first.”

“And if there is a hitch, and we have not time to arm all squadrons, what am I to leave till last?”

“Condor Squadron,” replied Ledesma promptly.

Well, that fitted. Condor Squadron still had old Dakotas, admirably suited for troop-carrying. Carancho and Caudón were fast jets. Curious. Surely you would start the slowest squadron first, if you wanted them all to be over Vergara together; and surely you wouldn't keep your fighters stooging around and using up fuel while the bombers took off? Miro risked a discreet question.

“As I have said already, General,” Ledesma answered, putting him in his place, “this is an exercise as well as a demonstration. I wish to provide fighter cover for the airfield while Carancho, Caudón and Condor take off.”

Perfectly reasonable. But again Ledesma's character came in. This exercise was going to be extremely expensive — quite as expensive as a helicopter — yet he was notorious for saving money on training and fuel, and spending his economies on replacement and re-equipment of aircraft.

Three or four little pointers, plus that able woman's doubts . . . And not one of them strong enough to lay before the President. Very well, then, he would live up to Doña Concha's opinion of
him, and act without orders. It wouldn't make the least difference to the devastating effect of the squadrons swooping on Vergara, if Ledesma was really loyal. But if he wasn't, and meant to land his whole force at Lérida, that force wouldn't be quite so overwhelming as he and Avellana thought.

CHAPTER IX

[
December 5
]

I
T WAS BROAD DAYLIGHT
, and the wings of the Air Force trucks were already hot to the touch. The drivers and their mates lazed on the ground, smoking endless cigarettes with the entire content of men who had found themselves unexpectedly with nothing to do. It was typical of the Army, they agreed, to load their trucks with a tremendous show of speed and efficiency, and then to marshal them on the Citadel parade ground in the neat lines of a car-park and give no further sign of life. The troops moved smartly about the leisurely business of the garrison, indifferent to this invasion of aliens. For the men of the convoy they were at least something to watch. For the Air Force officers, dividing their curses between Fifth Division and the Holy Family, they were an added exasperation.

The officers of the garrison — those of them who were concerned with the move — were in a fury of shame and frustration. Outside Headquarters Colonel Rosalindo Chaves, commanding the First Infantry Brigade and in charge of the operation, had the honor to tell the Division provost marshal, the transport officer, the Q staff and Major Ferrer of the Field Company of Engineers exactly what he thought of them. They were not to talk to him about bad luck! Fifth Division was above bad luck! This was the
sort of thing expected of the Army, fifty years ago. It was the kind of incompetence which made Latin America the laughing stock of every civilized Army. . . .

Because the Air Force officers were within earshot, he said all this in a low, strangled voice which did not carry more than a hundred yards. The effort suffused his dark face with blood till it was the color of a well-polished mahogany table. He was a terrifying sight — short, squat, savage, his thin black mustache hanging over the corners of his wide Indian mouth and emphasizing the downward curve of the fleshy, mobile lips.

The officers scattered as he ordered the convoy away at once, out of the San Vicente Gate and by the new road to the airfield. One after another, like machine-gun bursts merging into the full clatter of battle, the engines roared and the loaded Air Force trucks began to move off the parade ground. Chaves waited till the whole close-packed column was in line and at last passing out of the Citadel. Then he loosed one final comment on the excretory processes of God Almighty, stamped through Headquarters and strode to the general's door. Half-unconsciously, he found himself inside the office and stood fiercely to attention as if to apologize for so abrupt an entry.

All was quiet within. General Kucera was reading a mimeographed manual,
Air Force Weapon Training
. Captain Irala was withdrawn behind his typewriter.

“I don't see how we could help it, Rosalindo,” said Miro mildly.

“Help it!
Jesús
, no! We couldn't help it, once it had happened! But it never ought to have happened, if that son of a black whore, Basilio Ferrer, who has the fornicating impertinence to call himself a major of engineers — and God help this Division if it ever has to depend on the Field Company! — hadn't run his ten-ton lorry into the ditch and tried to pull it out with a chain round the central pier of the old cotton mill. Anyone could have told him the thing was rotten, if he'd had the sense to ask! We've been using it to train your Combat Groups in house-to-house fighting for the last three months. A hundred tons of bricks all over the old road! And when half the convoy has worked its way round that mess,
one of their drivers tries to get airborne on a lump of concrete and instead of pushing him out of the way Ferrer lays out enough chain to hold the Blessed Virgin herself in hell and pulls that blasted ten-tonner into the gap. I've got the recovery vehicles out and two companies breaking their hearts with shovels, and now Ledesma has lost his temper — by God, he'd have learned to control himself if we had had the training of him! — and you tell me he has ordered the blocked half of the convoy to turn round and return to the airfield. If you would only leave road control to Q and Provost, instead of issuing a lot of contradictory orders . . .”

“I'm sorry, Rosalindo. I know I'm out of practice on this sort of thing. But it was the President's order that the whole move had to be arranged personally between Ledesma and me.”

“Ledesma doesn't know his arse from his elbow.”

“Well, you can't expect me to run a medical school. Have a drink, Rosalindo, and reduce the blood pressure!”

Colonel Chaves hung up his cap and relaxed, while Salvador Irala busied himself with glasses and light conversation.

“I was going very close to taking
you
out and putting you against a wall,” said Chaves.

“Bravely he bared his breast! Not another statue in the Alameda, Colonel?”

“On the walls of the cookhouse latrine and whitewashed before inspection. Well, thank God it's all over now! As soon as the lot I've just sent off by the new road is back on the airfield, Ledesma can send us the rest.”

“By the way, Rosalindo,” Miro said, “you're sure Ledesma hasn't started to send them up the new road already?”

“Of course I'm sure. You're handling it here.”

“Salvador?”

“My General?”

“You did pass on to Colonel Chaves Ledesma's last message?”

“Which one, my General?”

“That he was starting the empty convoy up the new road just as fast as he could pull them back from the old road.”

“No, I didn't say so in so many words. Ledesma was a little
incoherent, if you remember, my General. You told me to tell the colonel to clear this lot before Ledesma started the rest up the new road, but you didn't say he had.”

Colonel Chaves bounded out of his seat.

“But the devil take my mother and yours! They
can't
pass on the new road! It's single-line traffic, where the surface isn't finished.”

“I think there is a hoodoo on this place today,” said Miro despairingly.

“Hoodoo! All I say is, Chief — and I am not a man who likes to put things strongly! — I say, thank God there are only a few of us who know what's going on!”

“You feel I am responsible, Rosalindo?”

“Perhaps I am mistaken, but if you ask me . . .” Colonel Chaves began.

“At a Court of Inquiry, it would be difficult to put the blame on anyone else, wouldn't it?”

“Difficult? Why difficult? I'll take it, so long as
you
understand what I've had to put up with.”

“I do indeed, Rosalindo,” Miro said, giving him his best imitation of a Latin embrace, which was all the more charming for its clumsiness. “And let us hope that my next orders for you will be a little more interesting. Now, my advice to you is to let the Air Force sort out the mess themselves. They don't seem to appreciate all we're doing for them.”

Chaves looked from his general's affectionate face to the innocent eyes of his A.D.C. and back again.

“You'll pay me for this, Miro,” he said, using the off-duty intimacy of the second person singular. “Half the Air Force trucks for First Brigade, and don't you forget it!”

“Hombre!
Ask Jesús-María! If it depended on me . . .”

“And what doesn't depend on you? . . . Well, put it that I've guessed wrong! If you want me, I shall be in the mess reading the newspapers. Have you seen that they begin to call Avellana a ‘red' when he believes in more saints than a priest's washerwoman? And that makes me a ‘white,' when I don't believe there's any God at all and no worse devils than you and that one!”

Chaves recovered his hat, punctiliously saluted his general, and poked out two fingers at Captain Irala as if to avert his evil eye.

“They could manhandle the stuff from the loaded convoy to the empty one.” suggested Salvador when the door was shut.

“They could. But the trucks will be jammed nose to tail if I know them, and that means that the front half of the convoy will have to go back in reverse. And it's half-past eleven now. They can't shift the bombs. They might be able to arm a flight of fighters if they don't go crazy first.”

“Suppose Ledesma puts it off till tomorrow?”

“If he does, Salvador, it's proof of his loyalty. He daren't put it off if he means to land at Lérida. The squadrons are fueled and the ring of officers who are in the know must have been widened. One leak, and Vidal will order us on to the airfield. Ledesma's security problem is impossible. No, he daren't put it off.”

The telephone was silent. No more protest, hot fury and cold insults came through from Ledesma. It was obvious that he suspected deliberate sabotage. Or was it obvious? He might have given the convoy up as hopeless and reserved his energy for the far more pressing decisions on the ground.

Miro's own nerves began to fray. He felt like an actor whose audience has walked out. A dozen nightmarish effects of his deceit, all of them wildly unlikely but possible, insisted on his consideration. His own dismissal was the least of them. That, he knew, would be a bitter blow — unless it came from the hand of Avellana — but Feli and the Fonsagrada estate would soon soften it.

He tried to stick firmly to the common sense of his original decision: that the demonstration over Vergara would end the revolution, whether the planes were armed or not, and that he himself was able to refuse the arms whereas Vidal was not.

But as yet it was impossible to say that to the President; and the President had taken the place of Ledesma on the other end of the telephone. He could not be tortured as the marshal had been; in fact torture was the other way round. Vidal continually demanded reports. Every half-hour he tried to catch his garrison commander out in some inconsistency. Never before had Miro
known him really angry, so there was no evidence on which to judge his manner. Certainly he was polite — by nature he couldn't be anything else — but his voice was unsteady and he permitted himself an icy irony. Doubt was there too. Vidal had his own nightmare to contend with. What would be his position if the Air Force was entirely loyal, but Fifth Division was about to change sides and declare for Avellana? Miro longed to tell him to talk to his wife. But presumably he had. One couldn't imagine him suffering the agonies of that morning without asking for reassurance. And if still she had not admitted her wise interference with the wheels of government, it was not Miro's business to do so.

At lunchtime he stayed in his office, for once thankful to get rid of Salvador Irala, before whom a façade of cool certainty had to be maintained. He sprang from his chair the moment his A.D.C. was out of the room, drummed his fingers on the window, then on Irala's desk. His eye fell on the papers upon which Salvador had been concentrating, effacing himself so far as possible. It was a poem to some blasted girl called Agueda. He observed, before he looked conscientiously away, that her hair was red-gold and that Danaë, the sun and the flames of hell were all working overtime. Miro felt an unanalyzable mixture of anger and appreciation. After all, Salvador had had nothing to do but refrain from comment. He gave a bark of laughter which shamed and shocked him as if he had caught himself talking aloud. He sat down again, pressing his own immobile, uniformed weight into the chair, conscious of his solidity and allowing it to take command of his mood.

The telephone buzzed. He picked it up unwillingly. But it was Rosalindo Chaves speaking from the mess.

“Carancho or Caudón have taken off.”

Miro dashed en to the veranda and leveled his field glasses. There, away to the northeast, were the specks climbing steeply into the air. Well, Ledesma hadn't sent up his fighters first as he had said he was going to. But that meant nothing. He might be holding them back in the hope of getting some ammunition.

He strolled over to the mess, trying to look as if nothing at all could surprise him.

They were all outside, watching the sky.

Somebody put a glass of manzanilla into his hand. He drained it and handed it back.

“What's the course?” he asked.

Captain Irala was sitting in the open window of the anteroom with telephone to his ear and notebook on the table in front of him.

“I'm holding A.A. defense,” he said. “A private alert. All reports to the mess.”

Invaluable poet! No one else was in a position to know the vital importance of close contact with the Citadel's radar screen.

“Taking off to the north,” he reported a few seconds later.

The specks of the first bomber squadron vanished from sight. The second could just be seen.

“Turning,” Salvador reported. “Close formation. Course south. Looks as if they were coming over San Vicente.”

Another minute and there was no doubt about it. The two squadrons swept past the Citadel three or four miles to the east and over the capital. That, Miro was certain, had never been in Ledesma's orders or even proposed to the President. Since the demonstration was unexpected, it would alarm the populace.

“Course now?”

“Southeast.”

“Lérida or Vergara?”

His officers all turned their heads to him. The question opened up an abyss of speculation, of news that might come, of orders that might be received and given.

“Vergara. Fighters taking off now.”

They remained in sight, turning west and then roaring low over the sea. One flight peeled off from the formation and screamed straight at the Citadel.

There were various detachments in sight of the mess, and it was his troops whom Miro watched, not the deafening, terrifying projectiles overhead. Nobody broke or took cover. He observed that the crew of an old Bofors gun, training in a corner of the parade ground, was making a perfectly cool effort — naturally impossible — to follow the target. He made a mental note to ask for their names. By and large the response to a simulated surprise attack was not bad.

“Ledesma is saying what he thinks of us,” he remarked.