High Citadel / Landslide (5 page)

Now there was a character, thought O’Hara; Rohde was a man of unsuspected depths. Although he was not a medical man, he had a good working knowledge of practical medicine which was now invaluable. O’Hara had immediately turned to Willis for help with Mrs Coughlin, but Willis had said, ‘Sorry, I’m a physicist—not a physician.’

‘Dr Armstrong?’ O’Hara had appealed.

Regretfully Armstrong had also shaken his head. ‘I’m a historian.’

So Rohde had taken over—the non-doctor with the medical background—and the man with the gun.

O’Hara turned his attention to Forester. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘This is the way it was,’

He told everything that had happened, right back from the take-off in San Croce, dredging from his memory everything Grivas had said. ‘I think he went off his head,’ he concluded.

Forester frowned. ‘No, it was planned,’ he contradicted. ‘And lunacy isn’t planned. Grivas knew this airstrip and he knew the course to take. You say he was at San Croce airfield when the Samair plane was grounded?’

‘That’s right—I thought it was a bit odd at the time. I mean, it was out of character for Grivas to be haunting the field in the middle of the night—he wasn’t that keen on his job.’

‘It sounds as though he
knew
the Samair Boeing was going to have engine trouble,’ commented Willis.

Forester looked up quickly and Willis said, ‘It’s the only logical answer—he didn’t just steal a plane, he stole the contents; and the contents of the plane were people from the Boeing. O’Hara says those big crates contain ordinary mining machinery and I doubt if Grivas would want that.’

‘That implies sabotage of the Boeing,’ said Forester. ‘If Grivas was expecting the Boeing to land at San Croce, it also implies a sizeable organization behind him.’

‘We know that already,’ said O’Hara. ‘Grivas was expecting a reception committee here. He said, “They’ll be here any minute.” But where are
they?
’

‘And
who
are they?’ asked Forester.

O’Hara thought of something else Grivas had said: ‘…they’ll kill the lot of you.’ He kept quiet about that and asked instead, ‘Remember the last thing he said—
“Vivaca”?
It doesn’t make sense to me. It sounds vaguely Spanish, but it’s no word I know.’

‘My Spanish is good,’ said Forester deliberately. ‘There’s no such word.’ He slapped the side of his leg irritably. ‘I’d
give a lot to know what’s been going on and who’s responsible for all this.’

A weak voice came from across the room. ‘I fear, gentlemen, that in a way I am responsible.’

Everyone in the room, with the exception of Mrs Coughlin, turned to look at Señor Montes.

Montes looked ill. He was worse than he had been in the air. His chest heaved violently as he sucked in the thin air and he had a ghastly pallor. As he opened his mouth to speak again the girl said, ‘Hush,
tio
, be quiet. I will tell them,’

She turned and looked across the cabin at O’Hara and Forester. ‘My uncle’s name is not Montes,’ she said levelly. ‘It is Aguillar.’ She said it as though it was an explanation, entire and complete in itself.

There was a moment of blank silence, then O’Hara snapped his fingers and said softly, ‘By God, the old eagle himself.’ He stared at the sick man.

‘Yes, Señor O’Hara,’ whispered Aguillar. ‘But a crippled eagle, I am afraid.’

‘Say, what the hell is this?’ grumbled Peabody. ‘What’s so special about him?’

Willis gave Peabody a look of dislike and got to his feet. ‘I wouldn’t have put it that way myself,’ he said. ‘But I could bear to know more.’

O’Hara said, ‘Señor Aguillar was possibly the best president this country ever had until the army took over five years ago. He got out of the country just one jump ahead of a firing squad.’

‘General Lopez always was a hasty man,’ agreed Aguillar with a weak smile.

‘You mean the government arranged all this—this jam we’re in now—just to get you?’ Willis’s voice was shrill with incredulity.

Aguillar shook his head and started to speak, but the girl said, ‘No, you must be quiet.’ She looked at O’Hara appealingly. ‘Do not question him now, señor. Can’t you see he is ill?’

‘Can you speak for your uncle?’ asked Forester gently.

She looked at the old man and he nodded. ‘What is it you want to know?’ she asked.

‘What is your uncle doing back in Cordillera?’

‘We have come to bring back good government to our country,’ she said. ‘We have come to throw out Lopez.’

O’Hara gave a short laugh. ‘To throw out Lopez,’ he said flatly. ‘Just like that. An old man and a girl are going to throw out a man with an army at his back.’ He shook his head disbelievingly.

The girl flared up. ‘What do you know about it; you are a foreigner—you know nothing. Lopez is finished—everyone in Cordillera knows it, even Lopez himself. He has been too greedy, too corrupt, and the country is sick of him.’

Forester rubbed his chin reflectively. ‘She could be right,’ he said. ‘It would take just a puff of wind to blow Lopez over right now. He’s run this country right into the ground in the last five years—just about milked it dry and salted enough money away in Swiss banks to last a couple of lifetimes. I don’t think he’d risk losing out now if it came to a showdown—if someone pushed hard enough he’d fold up and get out. I think he’d take wealth and comfort instead of power and the chance of being shot by some gun-happy student with a grievance.’

‘Lopez has bankrupted Cordillera,’ the girl said. She held up her head proudly. ‘But when my uncle appears in Santillana the people will rise, and that will be the end of Lopez.’

‘It could work,’ agreed Forester. ‘Your uncle was well liked. I suppose you’ve prepared the ground in advance.’

She nodded. ‘The Democratic Committee of Action has made all the arrangements. All that remains is for my uncle to appear in Santillana.’

‘He may not get there,’ said O’Hara. ‘Someone is trying to stop him, and if it isn’t Lopez, then who the hell is it?’

‘The
comunistas
,’ the girl spat out with loathing in her voice. ‘They cannot afford to let my uncle get into power again. They want Cordillera for their own.’

Forester said, ‘It figures. Lopez is a dead duck, come what may; so it’s Aguillar versus the communists with Cordillera as the stake.’

‘They are not quite ready,’ the girl said. ‘They do not have enough support among the people. During the last two years they have been infiltrating the government very cleverly and if they had their way the people would wake up one morning to find Lopez gone, leaving a communist government to take his place.’

‘Swapping one dictatorship for another,’ said Forester. ‘Very clever.’

‘But they are not yet ready to get rid of Lopez,’ she said. ‘My uncle would spoil their plans—he would get rid of Lopez and the government, too. He would hold elections for the first time in nine years. So the communists are trying to stop him.’

‘And you think Grivas was a communist?’ queried O’Hara.

Forester snapped his fingers. ‘Of course he was. That explains his last words. He was a communist, all right—Latin-American blend; when he said “
vivaca
” he was trying to say “
Viva
Castro”.’ His voice hardened. ‘And we can expect his buddies along any minute.’

‘We must leave here quickly,’ said the girl. ‘They must not find my uncle.’

O’Hara suddenly swung round and regarded Rohde, who had remained conspicuously silent. He said, ‘What do you import, Señor Rohde?’

‘It is all right, Señor O’Hara,’ said Aguillar weakly. ‘Miguel is my secretary.’

Forester looked at Rohde. ‘More like your bodyguard.’

Aguillar flapped his hand limply as though the distinction was of no consequence, and Forester said, ‘What put you on to him, O’Hara?’

‘I don’t like men who carry guns,’ said O’Hara shortly. ‘Especially men who could be communist.’ He looked around the cabin. ‘All right, are there any more jokers in the pack? What about you, Forester? You seem to know a hell of a lot about local politics for an American businessman.’

‘Don’t be a damn fool,’ said Forester. ‘If I didn’t take an interest in local politics my corporation would fire me. Having the right kind of government is important to us, and we sure as hell don’t want a commie set-up in Cordillera.’

He took out his wallet and extracted a business card which he handed to O’Hara. It informed him that Raymond Forester was the South American sales manager for the Fairfield Machine Tool Corporation.

O’Hara gave it back to him. ‘Was Grivas the only communist aboard?’ he said. ‘That’s what I’m getting at. When we were coming in to land, did any of the passengers take any special precautions for their safety?’

Forester thought about it, then shook his head. ‘Everyone seemed to be taken by surprise—I don’t think any of us knew just what was happening.’ He looked at O’Hara with respect. ‘In the circumstances that was a good question to ask.’

‘Well, I’m not a communist,’ said Miss Ponsky sharply. ‘The very idea!’

O’Hara smiled. ‘My apologies, Miss Ponsky,’ he said politely.

Rohde had been tending to Mrs Coughlin; now he stood up. ‘This lady is dying,’ he said. ‘She has lost much blood and she is in shock. And she has the
soroche
—the mountain-sickness. If she does not get oxygen she will surely die.’ His black eyes switched to Aguillar, who seemed to have fallen asleep. ‘The Señor also must have oxygen—he’s in grave danger.’ He looked at them. ‘We must go down the mountain. To stay at this height is very dangerous.’

O’Hara was conscious of a vicious headache and the fact that his heart was thumping rapidly. He had been long enough in the country to have heard of
soroche
and its effects. The lower air pressure on the mountain heights meant less oxygen, the respiratory rate went up and so did the heart-beat rate, pumping the blood faster. It killed a weak constitution.

He said slowly, ‘There were oxygen cylinders in the plane—maybe they’re not busted.’

‘Good,’ said Rohde. ‘We will look, you and I. It would be better not to move this lady if possible. But if we do not find the oxygen, then we must go down the mountain.’

Forester said, ‘We must keep a fire going—the rest of us will look for wood.’ He paused. ‘Bring some petrol from the plane—we may need it.’

‘All right,’ said O’Hara.

‘Come on,’ said Forester to Peabody. ‘Let’s move.’

Peabody lay where he was, gasping. ‘I’m beat,’ he said. ‘And my head’s killing me.’

‘It’s just a hangover,’ said Forester callously. ‘Get on your feet, man.’

Rohde put his hand on Forester’s arm. ‘
Soroche
,’ he said warningly. ‘He will not be able to do much. Come, señor.’

O’Hara followed Rohde from the cabin and shivered in the biting air. He looked around. The airstrip was built on the only piece of level ground in the vicinity; all else was steeply shelving mountainside, and all around were the pinnacles of
the high Andes, clear-cut in the cold and crystal air. They soared skyward, blindingly white against the blue where the snows lay on their flanks, and where the slope was too steep for the snow to stay was the dark grey of the rock.

It was cold, desolate and utterly lifeless. There was no restful green of vegetation, or the flick of a bird’s wing—just black, white and the blue of the sky, a hard, dark metallic blue as alien as the landscape.

O’Hara pulled his jacket closer about him and looked at the other huts. ‘What is this place?’

‘It is a mine,’ said Rohde. ‘Copper and zinc—the tunnels are over there.’ He pointed to a cliff face at the end of the airstrip and O’Hara saw the dark mouths of several tunnels driven into the cliff face. Rohde shook his head. ‘But it is too high to work—they should never have tried. No man can work well at this height; not even our mountain indios.’

‘You know this place then?’

‘I know these mountains well,’ said Rohde. ‘I was born not far from here.’

They trudged along the airstrip and before they had gone a hundred yards O’Hara felt exhausted. His head ached and he felt nauseated. He sucked the thin air into his lungs and his chest heaved.

Rohde stopped and said, ‘You must not force your breathing.’

‘What else can I do?’ said O’Hara, panting. ‘I’ve got to get enough air.’

‘Breathe naturally, without effort,’ said Rohde. ‘You will get enough air. But if you force your breathing you will wash all the carbon dioxide from your lungs, and that will upset the acid base of your blood and you will get muscle cramps. And that is very bad.’

O’Hara moderated his breathing and said, ‘You seem to know a lot about it.’

‘I studied medicine once,’ said Rohde briefly.

They reached the far end of the strip and looked over the edge of the cliff. The Dakota was pretty well smashed up; the port wing had broken off, as had the entire tail section. Rohde studied the terrain. ‘We need not climb down the cliff; it will be easier to go round.’

It took them a long time to get to the plane and when they got there they found only one oxygen cylinder intact. It was difficult to get it free and out of the aircraft, but they managed it after chopping away a part of the fuselage with the axe that O’Hara found on the floor of the cockpit.

The gauge showed that the cylinder was only a third full and O’Hara cursed Filson and his cheese-paring, but Rohde seemed satisfied. ‘It will be enough,’ he said. ‘We can stay in the hut tonight.’

‘What happens if these communists turn up?’ asked O’Hara.

Rohde seemed unperturbed. ‘Then we will defend ourselves,’ he said equably. ‘One thing at a time, Señor O’Hara.’

‘Grivas seemed to think they were already here,’ said O’Hara. ‘I wonder what held them up?’

Rohde shrugged. ‘Does it matter?’

They could not manhandle the oxygen cylinder back to the huts without help, so Rohde went back, taking with him some mouthpieces and a bottle of petrol tapped from a wing tank. O’Hara searched the fuselage, looking for anything that might be of value, particularly food. That, he thought, might turn out to be a major problem. All he found was half a slab of milk chocolate in Grivas’s seat pocket.

Rohde came back with Forester, Willis and Armstrong and they took it in turns carrying the oxygen cylinder, two by two. It was very hard work and they could only manage to move it twenty yards at a time. O’Hara estimated that back in San Croce he could have picked it up and carried it a mile, but the altitude seemed to have sucked all the
strength from their muscles and they could work only a few minutes at a time before they collapsed in exhaustion.

When they got it to the hut they found that Miss Ponsky was feeding the fire with wood from a door of one of the other huts that Willis and Armstrong had torn down and smashed up laboriously with rocks. Willis was particularly glad to see the axe. ‘It’ll be easier now,’ he said.

Rohde administered oxygen to Mrs Coughlin and Aguillar. She remained unconscious, but it made a startling difference to the old man. As the colour came back to his cheeks his niece smiled for the first time since the crash.

O’Hara sat before the fire, feeling the warmth soak into him, and produced his air charts. He spread the relevant chart on the floor and pin-pointed a position with a pencilled cross. ‘That’s where we were when we changed course,’ he said. ‘We flew on a true course of one-eighty-four for a shade over five minutes.’ He drew a line on the chart. ‘We were flying at a little over two hundred knots—say, two hundred and forty miles an hour. That’s about twenty miles—so that puts us about—
here.
’ He made another cross.

Forester looked over his shoulder. ‘The airstrip isn’t marked on the map,’ he said.

‘Rohde said it was abandoned,’ said O’Hara.

Rohde came over and looked at the map and nodded. ‘You are right,’ he said. ‘That is where we are. The road down the mountain leads to the refinery. That also is abandoned, but I think some
indios
live there still.’

‘How far is that?’ asked Forester.

‘About forty kilometres,’ said Rohde.

‘Twenty-five miles,’ translated Forester. ‘That’s a hell of a long way in these conditions.’

‘It will not be very bad,’ said Rohde. He put his finger on the map. ‘When we get to this valley where the river runs we will be nearly five thousand feet lower and we will
breathe more easily. That is about sixteen kilometres by the road.’

‘We’ll start early tomorrow,’ said O’Hara.

Rohde agreed. ‘If we had no oxygen I would have said go now. But it would be better to stay in the shelter of this hut tonight.’

‘What about Mrs Coughlin?’ said O’Hara quietly. ‘Can we move her?’

‘We will have to move her,’ said Rohde positively. ‘She cannot live at this altitude.’

‘We’ll rig together some kind of stretcher,’ said Forester. ‘We can make a sling out of clothing and poles—or maybe use a door.’