MAMista. Len Deighton
his father said there was a shelf that still smelled of Parmesan. But those domestic traces had not lessened the terror of the men brought to that SS office in Rome. And the modern fittings and office equipment did nothing to lessen the anxieties of men in this building.
Lucas brushed the cement dust off his jacket. In Spanish Guiana there were as many grades of cell as there were grades of hotel room. Lucas had spent the night in a cell equipped with heating and a shower bath. He’d been given a blanket and his bunk had a primitive mattress. It was by no means like the comfortable quarters provided for deposed Cabinet Ministers, but neither was it comparable to the stinking bare-earth underground dungeons.
Lucas had not slept well. He lowered himself into the soft armchair that Papá Cisneros indicated and felt the pain of his stiff joints. Cisneros closed the slatted blinds as if concerned not to dazzle his visitor. The sunlight still came through the lower part of the window and made a golden parallelogram upon the brown carpet.
The office was being prepared for a visit by a party of American Senators. Cisneros’ honorary doctorate from Yale, a group photo taken at the International Law Conference in Boston and the framed certificate given to those privileged few who’d flown as passengers in Air Force One had been stacked against the wall prior to being hung in a prominent position behind his desk. A large oil of a Spanish galleon anchored in Tepilo Bay, and an engraving of Saint Peter healing the sick, were to be put in the storeroom. An idealized portrait of Admiral Benz was to be moved to another wall. Papá kept changing things. Next week a large group of freeloaders from the European Community was coming to see him. It would all be changed again.
‘Gracias,’ said Cisneros, dismissing the warder with a careless wave. But it would have been a reckless visitor who believed that his ornamental mirror was anything but an observation panel or that the wardrobe was anything but a door behind which an armed guard sat.
‘This American boy: Angel Paz,’ said Cisneros very casually as he looked at the papers on his desk. ‘You say he is with you?’
‘Yes, he is with me,’ said Lucas.
Cisneros smiled. Greying hair curled over his ears, his eyes were large and heavily lidded. His nose was curved and beak-like. Papagayo! thought Lucas suddenly. Parrot, dandy, or tailor’s dummy, in whichever sense one used the word, it was a perfect description of Cisneros.
‘I wish you would not lie to me, Colonel Lucas.’
Lucas stared back at him without speaking.
‘If you would simply admit the truth: that you met him at that party for the first time, then I could probably release you quite soon.’
Lucas still said nothing.
Cisneros said, ‘Do you know what sort of people you will be dealing with, if you travel south?’
‘Am I to travel south?’ Lucas said.
‘Many young men have the same spirit of aggression, but they do not explode bombs in places where innocent people get killed and maimed. You British have had a taste of this same insanity: in Palestine, in Malaya, in Kenya, in Cyprus, in Aden and in Ireland. Tell me what I should do.’ There was a buzzer and Cisneros reached under his desk. The door opened and a man came in carrying a small tray with coffee. The man was dressed in a coarsely woven work-suit with a red stripe down the trousers and a red patch on the back between the shoulders. Papá liked to have prison trusties working here as evidence of the Ministry’s concern with rehabilitation. Only those people coming here regularly over the years were likely to notice that the trusties were always the same men. And the sort of visitors who might remark on this shortcoming of the rehabilitation policy were not the ones likely to be served coffee.
‘Thank you,’ Cisneros told the servant. Then he poured jet-black coffee into thimble-sized cups and passed one of them to Lucas.
‘Thank you, Minister,’ Lucas said.
For a moment Papá’s face relaxed enough for Lucas to get a glimpse of a tired disillusioned man trying too hard. The same dusting of talc that hid his faint shadow of beard lodged in the wrinkles round his eyes, so that they were drawn white upon his tanned face. Lucas drank the fierce coffee and was grateful for the boost it gave him.
‘Look at the view,’ said Cisneros. He moved the blind. He didn’t mean the new marina, where the yachts and power boats were crowded, nor the sprawling shanty-towns and the tiled roofs amid which this tall glass-fronted building stood like a spacecraft from another planet. He meant the hilly chaos of steamy vegetation. It startled Lucas to be reminded that some parts of the jungle reached so near to the town. From this high building it was an amazing sight. The trees held the mist so that the valleys were pure white, the ridges emerald, and hundreds of hilltops made islands of the sort which cartoonists draw. The same wind that howled against the windows disturbed the endless oceans of cloud. Sometimes it created phantom breakers so fearsome they swamped the treetops, submerging an island so completely that it never reappeared.
Both men watched the awe-inspiring landscape for a moment or two, but the glare of the sun caused them both to turn away at the same time. Papá Cisneros poured more of the potent coffee to which he was addicted. ‘You are not guerrilla material. You have nothing in common with those maniacs. What are you doing here, Colonel?’ He did not give the words great importance. He said them conversationally while selecting a cheroot from a silver box on his desk. They were made specially for him and he savoured the aroma of the fermented leaf almost as much as he enjoyed smoking them.
‘From what I have seen of your Federalistas I’ve nothing in common with them either,’ said Lucas.
Cisneros managed a slight laugh and waved his unlit cheroot as if signalling a hit on the rifle range. ‘My Federalistas are peasants – fit youngsters, ambitious and ruthless. They are exactly the same profile as your guerrillas.’ He sniffed at the cheroot.
The way he said ‘Your guerrillas’ provided Lucas with an opportunity to disassociate himself from them but he did not do so.
Cisneros picked up a cigarette lighter in his free hand and held it tight in his fist like a talisman. ‘Exactly the same profile.’ He moved the unlit cheroot closer to his mouth but spoke before he could put it there. ‘There is attraction between opposing forces. Your guerrillas want to be soldiers. They dress in makeshift uniforms, and drill with much shouting and stamping of feet. They give themselves military rank. Men in charge of platoons are called battalion commanders; men who command companies are called generals.’ He smiled and again brought the cheroot near to his mouth. ‘No longer do I hear about “revolutionary committees”; nowadays this riff-raff have meetings of their “General Staff”. They don’t murder their rivals and praise their accomplices; they shoot “deserters” and award “citations”. Don’t tell me these men are trying to overturn a military dictatorship.’ This time the cheroot reached his mouth. He lit it, inhaled, snapped the lighter closed, gestured with the cheroot and exhaled all in one continuous balletic movement. Snatching the cheroot away from his mouth he said urgently, ‘No, they want to replace this government with a real dictatorship. Make no mistake about what your friends intend, Colonel, should they ever shoot and bomb their way to power.’
‘What would they do?’ asked Lucas.
‘Did my fellows tear your jacket like that?’ Cisneros asked as if seeing Lucas for the first time. ‘I’ll have someone repair it for you … What would they do …’ He placed the cheroot in a brass ashtray that was close at hand next to the photo of his wife. ‘Admiral Benz pushed through the Crop Substitution Bill last winter. Many hundreds of hectares that were growing coca have planted coffee. Loud screams from the coffee farmers because they think their coffee bean prices will tumble.’ He paused. The bitterness in his voice was evident. It was hard to swallow criticism from the coffeegrowers after being their champion for so long. Whatever his motives he was sincere about this part of it. ‘Your guerrillas immediately promised support to the coffee farmers and started a bombing campaign here in the city.’
He paused as if inviting Lucas to speak but Lucas said nothing. Cisneros said, ‘Certain of my liberal middle-class friends say I should not take