A Flag for Sunrise (60 page)

Soyer was only half listening; he snorted happily.

“Garrulous. Like this professor.” He stood in front of Holliwell; he was about an inch shorter, a tall man. “So, Professor, want to give me an
abrazo
now? The Americans,” he told Heath, “love most of all to give
abrazos
. They—” Holliwell threw his cigarette in Soyer’s face and struck him above the mouth with a straight-armed right. In a second, Heath and the lieutenant had pinned him. The lieutenant
had the strength of a weight lifter; Holliwell’s arm went numb in his grasp but the shoulder to which it was joined hurt quite a lot.

He was pleased to see that Mr. Soyer had stopped smiling. Mr. Soyer was several feet away now, his lip bloody and his face pale. But he held a gun in his hand that was pointed at Holliwell.

“Steady on, Miguel,” Heath said.

Holliwell immediately regretted his rashness. He watched the gun in the Cuban’s hand as the man walked toward him again. If he was not shot, he thought, he would be struck across the face with the gun, and hitting Soyer was not nearly satisfying enough to buy that. But Soyer did not hit him.

“He wants to act like a man,” the Cuban explained. “Too late, Holliwell,” he said, putting the gun away. He touched his swollen lip. “Too late for that.”

“By Christ,” Heath said disgustedly, “you’re a bloody fool, Prof. You’re asking for it, you know.” They let go of him.

“I’m not offended by his bad temper,” Soyer said. “He’s going to take a ride with me. That’s right, Holliwell,” he said. “We’re going out to the mission, you and I together, and we’ll bring in Sister Justin. Then you can explain yourself to her as you have to me.”

Soyer and Campos went out again—Campos to communicate with his force at the mission, Soyer to clean up. Mr. Heath looked morose.

“Very foolish of you, Holliwell. Mind you, he was provoking. But very foolish all the same.”

“Of course,” Holliwell said.

“You’re in luck, you know. We may get your friend out of the shit. Suppose you hadn’t run into us?”

“Then who knows,” Holliwell said.

“The evening’s business won’t be pleasant for either of you. But you’ll really be better off.”

“Maybe I should be grateful.”

“You should,” Heath said. “One day you will be.”

There was a small dry food stain on the sleeve of his dark cotton jacket. He began to chip it away with his fingernail.

“Miguel can’t help feeling the way he does, you know. He’s lived out some bad history and he’s bitter. Actually he’s not bad as these fellas go.”

“What about you?”

Heath smiled.

“Oh me. I’m just standing my lonely vigil. The watch on the Rhine.”

“This is a bit far-flung for Six, isn’t it?”

“Six? I’m not Six, Holliwell. Well, not really. Not that I mind making my services available to the British taxpayer. Or the U.S. taxpayer. But I work for Investors Security International. We in turn work for the corporations that own land here. It’s a very large investment that’s under consideration on this coast, converting to tourism and so forth. Lot of money’s been paid out. They want to know what’s going on, eh? If we can help them maintain a favorable environment for their business, we do it. Nothing wrong with that, is there?”

“You enjoy it so much,” Holliwell said, “it must be all right.”

“That’s exactly the way I see it. I do like my work, you know. Now and again I can right a few wrongs. Make a little dent in our far from perfect old world.”

“Tell me about your friends Buddy and Olga. Are they helping you straighten things out?”

Heath laughed silently, in the way of someone caught out in guilty pleasure.

“Oh, they’re a project of mine. My next project—after you and the sister. They’re in the way of business for me because they’ve got themselves a local partner and bought a thousand hectares just north of here. That sort of people always has money, eh, Holliwell?” He shook his head and his faded flannel blue eyes came alive slightly. “But I’d go after them on my own time, if I had to. They’ll come to grief with me, don’t worry. I won’t have people like that about, chum—not in my bailiwick. Not running free.”

“It’s an interesting life you lead.”

Heath slipped away from the desk where he had been leaning and walked toward the door to the outer office. “I was never for the quiet life,” he said. “Life in the stockbroker belt was not for the likes of me. But never mind.” He stood in the open doorway looking out; the noise of cartridge clips being loaded and the cackle of a shortwave sounded from the adjoining space. “They’ll want you shortly,” he told Holliwell.

Holliwell stayed by the desk looking down at the black unmarked telephone that rested on it.

“You see,” Heath said, “I’m the wrath of God in my tiny way. I don’t go seeking out the misguided and the perverse, not at all. Those afflicted find me. I’m the shark on the bottom of the lagoon. You have to sink a damn long way before you get to me. When you do, I’m waiting.”

“That’s very good,” Holliwell said. “But don’t you think your clients may be out of luck with their investment here?”

“Very possibly. Still, they can’t say we didn’t try, can they?”

“No, they can’t.”

“It’s a war, Holliwell. Goes on all over the world. And, I suppose, in the long run the other side will win it. When they do, like all winners, they’ll find that things aren’t the way they’d planned and it didn’t turn out quite right. Then in a thousand years it’ll all be ancient history if there’s anyone to read it.” Mr. Heath pulled a long face. “But,” he said, “am I downhearted? No! The wicked flee when no man pursueth but the righteous are bold, Holliwell.”

He stood with Soyer on the colonnaded sidewalk in front of the Municipalidad, waiting for the dispatch of a jeep to take them up the coast. Military runners went back and forth between the Guardia station and the troop formations drawn up in the darkness of the square. The only lights to be seen in town now were the headlights of military vehicles and the yellow-faced flashlights of the Guardia MP’s who were directing the traffic.

Around the plaza itself, the troops awaited their orders in an uncanny silence that was broken only by the shouted instructions of an officer or the sullen, deep-throated
uno-dos-tres
of a platoon sounding off by number. From time to time one could hear the rhythmic tramp of a rifle squad moving at the double, as units separated themselves from the main body of troops to take their places in one of the trucks that were parked by the dozen in front of the cathedral steps. There were mounted troops as well; Holliwell could not see them but he could hear the clatter of shod horses’ hooves on the stones of Alvarado’s single paved street. Officers in braided high-crowned caps were appearing now, exchanging
abrazos
in the street—and a few civilians in
guayaberas
who looked like heroin dealers from the Bronx. The officers and their civilian associates seemed elated. None of them paid any attention to Soyer or Holliwell.

This tight deployment of many soldiers in a small closed space made Holliwell uneasy; his uneasiness was the result of previous conditioning. For the moment the fortunes of the Guardia Nacional were Holliwell’s fortunes—he had a side at last. He was fairly certain that from somewhere in the darkness beyond the occupied square he was being watched. He thought of the girl with braided hair and of the stare she had fixed upon him. From time to time he would see the same stare quicken in the eyes of a passing Guardia private; always it would fade when he met it, to be replaced by blankness,
nada
—or a guilty smile.

Presently two jeeps pulled up at the sidewalk where Holliwell and Soyer waited. Campos was in the lead jeep beside the driver; the escort carried four troopers and a 7.62. When Holliwell climbed into the rear seat, Soyer walked around to the passenger side for a minute’s guarded conversation with the lieutenant, then swung in beside Holliwell.

“Your nun is in her nunnery,” Soyer told him. “Campos has the place surrounded by Guardia but they’ll wait for us in deference to your nationality.” He took an automatic rifle from the rack behind the front seat and cradled the stock on his knee.

“You’re responsible for her,” Holliwell said.

“No,” said Soyer. “You are.”

The jeeps started up; a few deserted corners turned and they were climbing the tangled hill over the river. The road narrowed and descended into mangrove swamp and they could hear the sound of the ocean over their engines. Clear of the swamp they hit the beach strip. The darkness beyond their headlights was scented and absolute.

When they had driven for about twenty minutes, Holliwell found himself listening to the sound of a motorcycle somewhere ahead of them. The machine seemed to be holding a constant distance, leading them at their own speed. He began to sense the phantoms of Route Three, that paragon of war trails through night’s jungle. The escort jeep behind them followed close. Too close, Holliwell thought. At night in the jungle one always had a side to be on.

The report of the first mortar was so inevitable that Holliwell failed, in the first seconds, to take note of it. It had struck a good distance inland, far enough so that the charge echoed in the folds of the mountain wall. There was a second, then another, then the rattle of a machine gun—three long bursts. From a different quarter altogether
came the single-minded
wack wack wack
of a rifleman with a target. The firing came in waves of varying frequency but once it started it did not stop. None of it was very close by. Through it all, Holliwell could hear the steady drone of the motorcycle ahead.

He turned toward Soyer but could not see his face for the darkness, only that the Cuban had drawn his rifle closer and that his right hand rested over the trigger housing. Lieutenant Campos turned around in the front seat as though he were about to consult with Soyer, but then turned back again to face the road in silence. Holliwell, behind the driver, had sobered to a state of tortured alert. The dreadful visit they were about had receded from his mind; he stared into the shifting dark beside the road as though he could force its secrets to his senses. He noticed that the motorcycle preceding them was no longer to be heard.

As soon as he saw the mangrove log loom across the road at the extent of the headlights’ scan he knew exactly what would come. The log blocked the road at the neck of a curve; it had never been there before. Thinking back on it just afterwards, he would convulse in horror at the time he allowed to pass between his first sighting of the barrier and his leap into darkness. But in fact there had not been much; he was rolling on the packed sand and crawling for cover well before the two jeeps pulled up short and the machine guns opened up from the bend and from the inland side of the road approaching it.

The ambush had the form of an L, as he had somehow known it would. The L’s short horizontal bar enclosed the turn parallel with the barricade, the vertical bar lined the dozen feet or so in which the vehicles would have to decelerate. The gunners had nothing but time, Holliwell thought, frantically elbowing his way over the soft sand. They would have opened up before the tires stopped rolling; before them, two excellent Detroit jeeps, packed together immobile and neatly defined in their own light like a pair of squid cooked in the ink.

There was fuck-all cover on the open beach. Pressing himself into the contours of the sand he listened wild-eyed to the devouring enfilade, the shells ringing on metal, the screams. There was no moon, the stars were faint and cold in a sky ablaze with lights and colors from behind his own eyes. In that hallucinatory darkness, he could
not tell sea from shoreline or even distinguish the outline of palm groves. It seemed to him, when he thought over the instants just past, that at least one other passenger had jumped for it—it would have been seconds after his own dive. Whoever it was, if he had escaped, would be with him in the darkness now, out between the ocean and the hostiles.

The shooting on the road had stopped and he raised his head to look over his shoulder. One of the jeeps was burning; he saw a figure outlined for a moment against the flames. Men were laughing, speaking in excited voices. Two short bursts sounded—they were not taking prisoners that evening. Then the voices grew fainter as the ambush party retired, inland, toward the higher ground.

Holliwell crawled a little farther from the road and then stood up cautiously. He was about fifteen yards from the water’s edge. For a moment he stood still and listened hard—but he could hear no movement nearby, only the small waves laving the shore and the intermittent gunfire. He was alone and lost, in outer darkness without friend or faction. It was a frightening place—the point he had been working toward since the day he had come south. It was his natural, self-appointed place.

He hunkered down by the water’s edge and tried to decide on a course. He could not go back to town, both sides would be hunting him there, and now that there was blood upon the ground, explanations would not be suffered nor bargains struck. He might try to hide in the bush, where there were tiny plantation villages. But that would be unwise, he thought. They would know him for a survivor of the ambush. He would go the way of Cole.

At last he decided that he would walk to the mission. It seemed to him he had some claim on companionship there. He would tell her what had happened if he reached her in time, and if she could not or would not help him and he remained free—he might somehow lose himself among the other foreigners scavenging in the ruins there. He struck out along the shoreline.

He would not remember how long he walked before he came to the buildings at Las Ruinas. They had arranged hurricane lamps on the front steps in the form of a cross and these lights were the first he had seen since leaving Alvarado. He had followed the faint broiling glow of the tame surf, wetting his shoes, sinking, at places, to the calf
in soft sand. On his left, the dark ocean played out its infinity of time; inland, men played out their lives in a less patient darkness. Where he walked was no-man’s-land. Sometimes he felt free; at other times fear overcame him, waves of fear, congruous with the rise and fall of firing. He stopped only once—to watch two helicopters swing in tandem along the mountain slope, made visible for a moment in their searchlights.