Doctor Frigo (15 page)

I drank some wine before I answered. I was really quite angry myself now and Doctor Frigo was all too ready to mount his high horse; but I had a suspicion that indignation was what he was ready for and prepared to deal with. I tried mild sarcasm instead.

‘If, as you say, your business is with life insurance you must have encountered this difficulty before, surely?’

He smirked. ‘What difficulty?’

‘Doctors don’t talk about their patients to outsiders.’

‘The idea is that you should be an insider, Doctor. No, let me finish. What I’m talking about is your appointment by APT-Globe as one of their registered medical consultants. Everything communicated in total confidence and entirely ethical. Is there anything in French law or hospital regulations that would prohibit such an appointment? In case you’re not sure, I can tell you – there isn’t. The fee, by the way, would be five thousand dollars Canadian.’

A new camera
and
the Simca.

‘Very nice,’ I said. ‘There’s just one other problem that seems to have escaped your notice. When a man is examined for life insurance by a company-appointed physician he knows in advance about the purpose of the examination and the special interest of the examiner.’

‘Where’s the problem? I haven’t suggested that you should conceal your interest, have I? Naturally, he’d have to know. In insurance we have our own code of ethics, believe it or not. You can’t take out a life policy on a person without that person’s knowledge. In a lot of countries it’s actually illegal. Oh yes, I know about the man who took out airport accident coverage on his wife and then blew up
the plane she was on, but that doesn’t happen any more, believe me. Anyway, when it’s a corporation insuring an individual who isn’t even an employee, there isn’t a chance of his not knowing.’

He was getting me confused. ‘You seriously expect me to inform Señor Villegas that ATP-Globe proposes to pay me five thousand dollars for an opinion on the state of his health, so that some unnamed corporation can insure him for fifty million dollars?’

‘Of course not. Clearly, we would inform him formally of the proposal and request his formal acceptance in due legal form. We’re not crazy, Doctor. Neither is Señor Villegas, as far as we know. You may come up with a different opinion on that score, naturally. An involutional psychosis, say, would boost the premium quite a bit. But assuming that all is well in that department, I think you’ll find Villegas one hundred per cent co-operative. Why should he have to go to a strange doctor when we are prepared to accept the opinion of his own? It will be no surprise to him, I can assure you, that there are businessmen who place a high value on his continued wellbeing.’

‘No surprise at all?’

He laughed gently. ‘He will even tell you the name of the corporation in advance of his receiving our formal notice. You are involved here with intelligent, aware men, Doctor.’

‘Some corporate member of the Coraza Consortium, I take it.’

‘Who else? I’ll bet you’ve even guessed which one, too. Well, that figures. The only son of Clemente Castillo would scarcely be left in the dark, especially as he also just happens, by a curious coincidence, to be the new liberator’s personal physician. This must all be very heartening to you, Doctor.’

I pretended to have my mouth too full to be able to speak. Raised eyebrows were sufficient to set him going again.

‘After so many years of the men of Florida, I mean the Miami dreamers. These new techniques are really something.’

‘Techniques in what, Señor Rosier?’

‘Coup-making, of course.’ He gave me a merry smile. ‘No, Doctor, there’s no need to be careful. We know all about Plan Polymer. The new style coup, the rationalized accounting someone called it, I believe. The deal made in advance – token show of strength, minimal rough stuff, maximal courtesy, no victimization and the special plane to destination of choice – no surprises in any sector because surprises mean foul-ups. Right? Mind you, Polymer’s not the best name for it in my opinion, but then I’m no whiz-kid. Those boys go for scientific analogues even when they’re basically inappropriate.’

As I had only the flimsiest idea of what he was talking about I chose my question carefully.

‘What would you call it?’

‘Operation Fait Accompli.’ He chuckled. ‘Crude, but to the point. Anyway, it isn’t really new. Nothing is. You’ve read your coup history, I’m sure. Do you remember that telegram the generals sent Mussolini before the famous march on Rome? “Come. The food is cooked. The dinner is served. You have only to sit down at the table.” That’s the way to stage a coup d’état. Come and get it! All that street-fighting the blackshirts got into later didn’t mean a thing.’

‘Except to the casualties, I imagine.’

‘Right. The more blood there is the more bad feeling. A couple of palace guards who haven’t been told the score in advance, okay. The assistant chief of police whom nobody liked anyway, also okay. But that’s it. Bloodless if possible. Virtually bloodless will do. It’ll be acceptable to the media. Always supposing, of course, that the timing’s right.’

‘Ah yes. The timing.’

‘Your friends, the French,’ he began and then fell silent,
plainly revising, or seeming to revise, what he had been about to say.

I noted the turn of phrase, however; I am becoming familiar with it. ‘My Uncle Paco’ and ‘my friends the French’ are just two items on the list of my acquaintances now considered by others to be undesirable. Guilt by association is heavy in the air.

‘I’m going to be perfectly frank with you, Doctor,’ Rosier went on after a long pause.

I waited patiently for the lies that so often follow that particular declaration. They were delivered hesitantly, with a lot of chin-pulling and cheek-smoothing, the reluctant admissions of some inner man succumbing to threats of torture.

‘You must realize,’ he said, ‘that our clients have peculiar problems with this deal. There’s this Coraza oil field. Okay … it’s been known for quite a while that it was there, but nobody was much interested. Too costly to bring in. The OPEC goes haywire and Coraza becomes economically viable. Still needs a big capital investment, though, so a consortium is formed to spread the ante. Problem one. The government it’s doing business with is, to put it mildly, unstable. Okay, so you change the government before you get a Chile-type situation or the Cuban trainees move in. A Guatemala-type operation is obviously out.’

‘Why obviously?’

‘Jesus, Doctor!’ He was momentarily indignant. ‘What sort of a question is that? A Central American Watergate you want now?’

‘I only asked.’

‘Well forget it. We’re back to real self-determination. Deeds, not simply words. Accepting the need for change we come to terms with those who can make it stick, and if that means coming to terms with something farther left of centre than we like, so be it. We massage our goosepimples, smile and do some breathing exercises.
But
, there’s problem two.’ He poured the rest of his wine. ‘The process of change
is one thing. My clients’ losing a hunk of their equity in the process is quite another. They don’t want to do that.’

‘I suppose not.’

‘So we’re dealing here with two risks. Both cover a ninety-day period. The first begins any day now, as you know.’

‘No, I don’t know, Señor Rosier.’

‘Oh come on, Doctor. Around first June your patient and our good friend Villegas steps into a plane and takes off. I’ve no doubt that you’ll be in there with him checking his pulse and blood-pressure. Right?’

‘Wrong.’

‘Have it your own way. The point is that from the moment he starts, the risk starts. From then on it escalates. Granted the coup has been carefully and competently planned, granted that known sources of potential opposition have been neutralized, granted that his allies and advance men on the ground have done their jobs loyally and effectively – granted all that, the risk still escalates. Among the people showering flowers on the liberator there’s one nut with a hand grenade. Where there are coups there can be counter-coups. The consolidation phase falters, there’s a wrong move or two and we have a one hundred per cent fiasco. That’s number one risk. Let’s say, though, that we know enough to assess and cover it. All right?’

‘If you say so.’

‘But what about risk number two. Also ninety days, we figure, but starting later, during phase three. In fact, immediately after diplomatic recognition of the Democratic Socialist régime and announcement of the formation of the new National Mineral Resources Agency. Revocation of the existing Coraza concession follows and friendly talks with the consortium begin. Object, of course, to negotiate a new deal, to inaugurate a finer, friendlier, more equitable relationship between people’s government and foreign exploiters. That’s when my clients are liable to get screwed.’

‘Is being screwed something that can be insured against?’

‘Of course, Doctor. Everything can be insured against. In these cases there’s an established technique. It’s called “spreading” the premium.’

‘You mean hedging the bet?’

‘No, that’s not what I mean.’

His tone had suddenly become casual, almost bored, and his eyes had taken on a faraway look. Since I had, hitherto, neither been offered a bribe myself nor been invited to act as intermediary in the bribing of someone else, I failed to recognize immediately the characteristic signs that one or both of those possibilities is under discussion.

‘Then you’ll have to explain,’ I answered.

The casual tone went as suddenly as it had been assumed. He slapped the table hard enough to make the cutlery rattle. ‘Look, Doctor,’ he burst out angrily, then paused and drew a deep breath as if to master an upsurge of exasperation in the face of stupidity.

Another characteristic sign, I imagine. Proposer shows teeth and growls. Any hostile reaction from the subject is forestalled by making him feel that he’s in the wrong. Pre-emptive anger I suppose you could call it.

He forced himself visibly to become reasonable. ‘Let’s take it a step at a time,’ he said and flicked his wine glass with a finger nail. ‘Do you know El Lobo?’

‘I know of him, of course.’

El Lobo is the cover-name, at least for external propaganda purposes, of Edgardo Canales, the urban guerrilla leader whose organization has done so much recently to make the Oligarchy and its henchmen look incompetent as well as corrupt. Six kidnappings for ransom in as many weeks, with two of the victims, whose companies or families had refused to pay, killed and dumped contemptuously at the gates of the militia barracks, are crimes that even the controlled press and radio have been unable to conceal. The official contentions that they have been committed in the name of the Democratic Socialists and that El Lobo’s clandestine group – avowedly Marxist-Leninist – is under
the Party’s orders have never been explicitly denied by Villegas. The Party, he has said solemnly, is one of peace, and if some younger members of it have been driven to acts of desperation the responsibility must lie with those who create despair.

‘This El Lobo might interest you professionally, Doctor.’ Rosier snapped his fingers commandingly at the sommelier who, very properly, took no notice. ‘That’s if you’re interested in psychopaths,’ he added.

‘I’m not.’

‘You may
have
to become interested in this one. Your patient Villegas certainly will, especially when he gets to be El Presidente Villegas.’

‘
If
he gets to be president.’

‘Oh he’ll do that all right.’ He snapped his fingers again. This time the sommelier was too close to ignore him and took his order for brandies.

Rosier lit another cigarette and coughed. ‘Given the right conditions,’ he went on when the spasm had subsided, ‘just the right conditions – an economically backward population with political power in the hands of a few big-heads, no risk of superpower intervention, disaffected armed forces, an apathetic bureaucracy and a few well-led militants to rough up the gentry – it’s pretty easy to make a coup. Agreed?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘Yes. But what happens when the new incumbents, those who take over, have been living outside the country for a few years as exiles in foreign lands? I’ll tell you what happens. When the first fine flush of enthusiasm for the liberators has worn off, the people who weren’t in exile start thinking and taking second looks. And those who do the most thinking and looking are the militants, the subversives, those who made, or think they made, the whole coup possible. In this case that’s going to mean El Lobo and all those bright kids, the
really
bright, hard ones, he recruited from the university. What’s going to be their reaction when
they start thinking about and looking at liberators like Paco Segura? Okay, no need to answer.’

‘I wasn’t going to.’

‘Right. We both know the answer. Militancy and subversion are habit-forming. So are kidnapping and political murder. El Presidente’s first problem is going to be his allies within. Take El Lobo. How does he reward him? Make him police chief or head of intelligence? Won’t work. The army and air force brass who sat on their hands while you moved in have got to be taken care of. Besides a head of intelligence with real ability is too dangerous. He could soon be heading a counter-coup. So what’s left? Patronage of another sort. Give him a post in which he can make himself rich.’

‘If he’ll accept it.’

‘El Lobo’s not that much of an idealist, whatever he may tell those adoring students. Fast cars, yachts, fancy boy friends, and girls. You name it, he likes it.’

I was curious. ‘What about the really dedicated Marxist-Leninist supporters? You said they were bright. They can’t all be corruptible.’

‘Not all in the same way, no. Some men would give their right arms for the chair at the head of a committee table that meant power, or the illusion of it anyway.’

‘
Bright
young men?’

‘And women too these days. Believe me there’s a form of patronage to suit every kind. The trouble is they all cost money and that’s going to be your patient’s basic problem.’

‘I should have thought it was the least of them.’