A Game of Authors (11 page)

“A Lewis gun,” said Luac. “Even Raul didn’t know about it! We buried it beneath the files of my study.”

“A little memento from the revolution,” said Medina.

Garson stared at Luac.
He hasn’t answered a damned one of my questions!
He said,” You’re a bunch of . . .”

Anita Luac’s perfume wafted past his nostrils.

Her voice came from the darkness behind him. “We’re a bunch of what darling?”

She came up beside him, slipped her arm beneath his. For all that her actions betrayed it, the scene in the garden might never have happened.

“Maybe you’ll tell me, Nita,” said Garson.

“Tell you what?”

“What’s the connection between your father and Raul Separdo?”

She looked at the shadowy figure of her father. “Has he refused to tell you?”

“You know he has!”

“
Paz y pan
,” murmured Anita Luac.

“Nita!” her father snapped.

“I make my own decisions, Father, remember?”

Luac snorted.

“
Paz y pan
,” she repeated. “Peace and bread.”

Garson recalled seeing the slogan stenciled across a hammer and sickle design on the mud walls of a slum quarter in Guadalajara.

“But now it’s death and blood!” she said.

“What’s the communist slogan have to do with this?” asked Garson.

“My beloved father’s supposed to be one of their head propaganda writers for the Western Hemisphere.”

Luac turned away from them, stared out at the lake.

Garson absorbed this thought for a moment. He still could not fit the idea to Luac’s personality. “Supposed to be?” he asked. “Is he or isn’t he?”

“Oh, I think he was once. And he trained others, too. We had a regular school. But that was before mother died.”

“You’re handling this very badly, Nita!” barked Luac.

“But I’m doing it my own way, Father.”

“A propaganda school,” prompted Garson.

“My father’s so very clever,” she whispered. “His stories are always published. And then they carry subtle little twists for the American market: a sympathetic Russian here—a little race prejudice there—a dirty capitalist or two—a brutal American soldier—an atrocity story with a Yankee setting—stories to make the U.S. Government look bumbling and stupid.”

“I’ve read them.”

“Millions of people have, Mr. Garson.” She sighed. “The organization is very far reaching. We have agents in the U.S. who send the stories as their own—write a few themselves.”

Garson felt the paper under his shirt, recalled the list of names and addresses.

“What’s he really doing?”

“I’m not really sure. He says that the surest way to expose a sham and stupidity is to do a caricature of it. He says that fools like Raul can’t understand this.”

“But Olaf does!” snapped Luac. “That’s really why we’re in this mess.” He sounded petulantly defensive.

“Nita is explaining this,” said Garson.

Luac snorted.

She said, “He means, I believe, that if you
over
make a point—lay it on too thickly—then people see through to the weaknesses.”

“Oh. So he’s really been a double agent—working secretly against his masters.”

“That’s what he says.”

“Are you quite finished, Nita?” asked Luac.

“No, I don’t believe I am, Father.”

“Was your mother a communist?” asked Garson.

“Leave her out of this!” barked Luac.

“Yes, she was a communist,” said Anita Luac.

Garson felt the dryness of his mouth, swallowed. “And what’re you?”

“I’m my father’s little joke on our jailers. He taught me to hate them.”

“You’re a secret salesman for democracy.”

“Hah!” said Luac.

“How did they keep you in this jail?”

“We were never permitted off the hacienda together. Always one as hostage for the other.”

“What do the trucks bring?”

“Paper. The mysterious building is a printing plant. They print pamphlets for distribution all over Latin America.”

“Are any of the people across the lake loyal to your father?”

“A few of them. But they’re afraid of Raul. You saw what happened to poor Pánfil.”

Garson looked at the dark figure of Medina in the shadows by the windows. “What about you, Choco?”

“What do you mean?” He spoke without turning.

“How do you fit into all this?”

“Oh, the
Patron
and I have been together for years.”

“Father saved Choco’s life during the revolution,” said Anita Luac.

“Why hasn’t Raul just forced his hand with you, Nita?”

“Because he had to answer to Olaf for what father writes.”

“And Raul is afraid of Olaf. One more question: Who’s Olaf?”

“Latin American director for the Communist International. He was mother’s half-brother.”

Garson looked at Luac’s back. “You know, Luac. It appears to me that you let your emotions trap you just as securely as I did.”

“Hah!”

“Stalemate,” said Garson.

Anita Luac said, “I believe I’ve told him the essentials, Father.”

Luac turned, looked to Garson. “Which only proves that one’s own blood is not immune from idiocy!”

“Perhaps an immunity like that is passed down from the parents,” said Garson.

“Idiocy compounds idiocy,” said Luac. “And there you have the history of the world.”

“I still find it hard to believe you’re a communist.”

“There may be hope for you yet, Mr. Garson. I could answer the famous congressional question with all honesty: I am not now, nor have I ever been a communist.”

“You’ve been writing their propaganda.”

Antone Luac chuckled. “My little joke.”

“I’m hysterical!”

“Hah! Democracy! A legion of fools pushing each other over the edge of nowhere. Good government died with the absolute monarchs.”

“Long live King Luac!”

“The government of the United States has a few saving graces,” said Luac. “Vestiges of aristocracy. They’re moving away from it, though, toward . . .”

“Toward your pals in Red?”

“As a matter of fact, yes. And there we have the ultimate idiocy: the gigantic conglomeration of fools—asses—in full control of their own short destiny. That’s my capsule definition of communism.”

“But you’ve been helping the . . .”

“The world of fools is demanding this change, Mr. Garson. I think it is the greatest cosmic joke possible to give them a little peek into their own demise! And the really choice part of the joke is this: All the time I’m pushing, I am telling them precisely what’s wrong with the prison!”

A silent laugh shook him.

“For this you put yourself and your daughter into . . . into . . .” Garson waved a hand around him.

“There were other considerations at the time. Anita’s mother played the game seriously. Communism was a toy to her: a wonderful diversion. It pleased me to let her play with her toy.”

Anita Luac said, “Father, stop it!”

“No, my dear. When you opened the conversation with our young friend here, you made my present comments inevitable. When one pulls the stopper out of the tub, one cannot merely wish the water back into it.”

Garson said, “But you’re trapped here!”

“Oh, quite.”

“A blind moron would’ve seen that this situation would become impossible.”

“I was a blind moron.”

“You know what’ll happen to Nita if Raul takes her!”

“He won’t take her . . . alive.”

“
Patron!”
said Medina. “They are assembling canoes and boats along the opposite shore.” Luac turned away from Garson, bent over the Lewis gun, pushed it forward into a patch of moonlight. The fins of the machine gun’s air-cooled barrel cast weird shadows on the floor.

“Smash the window there to give me a better traverse,” said Luac.

Medina took up a rifle, swung it by the barrel to shatter the glass.
 

Garson crossed to Medina’s side, found a row of rifles across the arms of a chair, took one.

“Don’t fire until the order is given,” said Luac. “Choco! Give us a little light.”

Medina fumbled on the seat of the chair, crossed to the door, opened it, stood in the protection of the wall while he aimed something out across the lake.

A rocket arched from his hand, exploded into brilliance above the lake, drifted down slowly swinging from its tiny parachute.

In the sudden light, they could see masses of canoes and a scattering of rowboats along the far shore. Men ran from them, scrambled into the shadows of the trees.

“Shall I sink their navy?” asked Luac.

“It would be a better object lesson to wait until . . .”

A rifle bullet splatted into the door beside Medina. He dropped to his knees.

“That came from this side of the lake!”

“Where?” asked Luac.

“The little ridge up there above the graves.”

“Are the doors all locked in back?” asked Luac.

“Sí!”

“Where’s Maria?”

“
Aqui, Patron!
” The old woman’s voice came from the darkness behind them.

“Get down!” ordered Luac. “They will be shooting from the other side in a moment.”

Medina slipped away from the door, padded away into the darkness at the rear of the house. Presently, he returned. “All bolted down tight. We’d hear anyone before they could get in.”

Garson was staring to the right, down the lake toward El Grillo’s barrio. In the glare of the flare he could see the entire curve of shoreline. He looked to the left, saw that the ridge hid a short piece of the shore.

“They will come from the left,” said Garson. “They will try to get into the protection of the ridge, come up the other side until they can infiltrate the whole area.”

“He’s right,” said Medina. “I believe I’ll go out and discourage them as soon as the flare dies.”

“Antone!” It was a long, hallooing call from the ridge.

“Raul!” said Luac. “Don’t answer him!”

“We know you’re in there, Antone! Come out with your hands up.”

The flare sizzled to darkness in the lake.

Medina slipped out the door, faded into the darkness.

“Come out with your hands in the air!” called Separdo.

Luac said, “I feel something in the wind. I will give odds that Olaf has arrived.”

Garson felt a shudder pass over his body, jumped as Anita Luac brushed against his arm, lifted one of the rifles from the chair.

“A one-man picket line!” snapped Garson.

“Ahhh, but he was with Villa,” said Luac.

“And I was with the Marines. This situation stinks!”

“What do you suggest, Mr. Garson?”

“Is there a chance that El Grillo will help us?”

Luac turned his head slightly without taking his attention from the lake. “Maria? What about that? He’s your brother.”

“Quien sabe, Patron?”

“Send Maria for El Grillo,” said Garson. “Maybe in the confusion, we could . . .”

“El Grillo is also Raul’s cousin,” said Luac. “We cannot be sure of him. And there’s another complication.” He hesitated.

Garson crept up beside Luac. “Yes?”

“Eduardo was a favorite with El Grillo. What’s your guess on the story Raul gave him?”

“We’ve got to find out,” said Garson. “Raul doesn’t know yet that Maria’s with us.”

“But he suspects,” said Luac. “Otherwise, he’d have just walked in, believing all of us in a drugged slumber.”

Maria’s feet slithered up behind them. She spoke in a heavy accent: “Meester Garson?”

“Yes?”

“Why deed Raul keel my sahn?”

“Because Raul found out that your son brought Mr. Garson here to spy on him,” said Luac.

“I weel go,” she said.

“It’s very dangerous,” said Luac.

“Sí. Entiendo, Patron.”

I understand.
The words were spoken very softly and simply.

“Well, I’m not ordering her out there,” said Luac. “I refuse to participate in any more idiocy!”

A fusillade of rifle shots rang out along the ridge. Immediately, several probing bullets splatted against the thick adobe of the front walls—all fired from across the lake.

“Stay down low!” hissed Luac. “Nita?”

“I’m all right, Father.” Her voice sounded calm, as though she had come to some understanding with herself.

Presently, Medina scrambled through the front door.

“I could see you coming down most of the way,” said Luac. “Why didn’t they shoot at you?”

“Perhaps because they have retreated back off the ridge and into the grove,” panted Medina. “I am hit in the shoulder. It is just a scratch, but I would appreciate a bandage.”

“What’s it like out there?” asked Garson.

“It is very open, my friend. There is not much cover on this side of the ridge. I went clear back to the swamp before moving up.”

Anita Luac came up beside Medina, moved him into a patch of moonlight. “I got the first-aid kit.”
 

“Did you get any of them?” asked Luac.

“One, but I do not think it was Raul.”

“How many are there?” asked Garson.

“There is only one canoe on the . . .” He drew in a sharp breath,
“Aieee! Madre de Dios!”

“I’m sorry, Choco,” said Anita Luac. “It’s the only disinfectant we have.”

“
Puro fuego!
” he said.
Pure fire!

She tied a bandage around his upper arm. “I can’t see very well, Choco, but it looks like a clean wound just along the edge of the bone and through the muscle. The bullet went right on through.”

“I have cured such as this with nothing more than a good night’s sleep,” said Medina.

“You’re not going to get that sleep tonight,” said Garson.

Medina chuckled. “
Sí.
I will stay awake.”

Maria Gomez moved to the door. “
Choco! La luz!
” she said.
The light!

“What’s going on?” asked Medina.

“Mr. Garson had the brilliant idea to send Maria for El Grillo.”

“What could
he
do?”

Garson said, “He could come to that mudbank on the right over there where he brought me the first night. He could do it as soon as the moon is down.”

“As soon as the moon is down, that lake will be swarming with canoes,” said Medina.

“We could discourage the first swarm with a flare and the Lewis gun,” said Garson.