MAMista (40 page)

Eventually they put their kill on their shoulders and started along what was faintly discernible as a trail. Waving they indicated that the men should follow. They smiled artfully as if they knew exactly what was happening and where they should go.

The two little hunters moved quickly under the trees. The guerrillas, plodding slowly and burdened with their sick, followed the smell of the warm deer and the trail of its freshly spilled blood.

The hunters hurried ahead and then returned to be sure they were coming, like sheepdogs round a slow-witted flock. Eventually they reached a large clearing. One side of it was taken up by mixed crops, neatly planted in rows. On the other side stood a thatched hut and a corrugated-tin shed and a sugar press which smelled of powerful local rum. Behind a fence, red and black pigs and chickens were running around and making a noise. From somewhere out of sight came the barking of dogs.

A pale-faced man emerged from the doorway of the hut. He was a gaunt old character with a wispy beard and watery eyes. He wore tattered cotton trousers and a tartan shirt that had faded to a light grey. The hunters spoke to him in great excitement. He looked at them and then at the newcomers. He didn't like guerrillas: no one did. But this smelly lot of cripples would give no trouble. Using the local dialect that ensured confidentiality, he told one of the little tribesmen to take news of their arrival down to the place where the Federalista patrol regularly called. His position as a foreigner was always uncertain: he couldn't afford to be accused of harbouring guerrillas.

Long ago this old Austrian man had arrived here as a missionary. His belief had waned and he'd stayed to become first a farmer and then a recluse. At his call two nubile
young women brought out bananas and beans cooked to a mush. They put the food on a large table in the yard. There were flowers everywhere. ‘Eat,' said the old man, and when they had eaten the young women brought hot coffee too. It was fierce black stuff grown here on his land. With it came a big plastic container of home-made cane spirit.

When he had first heard the commotion, and the excited gabble of the tribesmen, the old man had allowed himself to hope that Europeans or Americans had arrived. For a moment he'd been excited enough to anticipate urbane conversation or a game of cards, but one look was enough to dispel such ideas. It was a pitiful crowd. They were a mixed collection – all shapes and sizes – but there were no Europeans nor Americans with them.

The guerrillas kept pointing to a muscular black fellow and saying that he was a Yankee, but the old man was unconvinced. It didn't matter much either way: the poor devil had been dead for ages. The old man wondered why they had carried the body so far. The dead man was quite cold and stiff: his flattened hands pressed together as if in prayer.

ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE
.
‘These things always work out.'

There was a time when the President of the United States of America was required to focus his attention solely on the affairs of the Nation. But now he'd become a super-mayor as well, for the malfunctioning township that stretched from coast to coast. His daily concerns still encompassed the wider issues: his Party, the budget deficit, the balance of trade and foreign policy, civil rights and the environment. Now he was also expected to take care of drug abuse, abortion, pollution, Savings and Loan accounts, urban blight, day care for infants and even layoffs in southern California.

The President had advisers of course. One of his most trusted ones – John Curl – sat opposite him now in Air Force One. There was a speech writer with him. He was looking over Curl's shoulder as Curl checked the draft of what the President would say to the gathering this afternoon. As well as slashing criss-cross deletions here and there, Curl was underlining places where the speech was to be expanded, and inserting queries against passages that must be checked by a researcher.

Curl handed it back to the writer. ‘It's great, Steve. I like that slow beginning. But make it more Californian. Forty per cent of the population there is made up of ethnic
minorities:
Comprende usted
? Insert some jokes about West Coast personalities maybe – and put in some kind of off-the-cuff indiscretion about offshore drilling. Jack knows the score if you need local colour.'

The speech writer nodded to Curl and to the President. Curl resumed his study of the itinerary that would begin the moment they touched down. Speeches and counter-speeches, honour guards, campaign songs, photo opportunities, motorcades, Press conferences without TV cameras, Press conferences with TV cameras, off-the-record interviews with a list of non-attributable statements, and a battery of meetings and dinners with party workers. Worse yet would be the bright-eyed ambitious wives, with their pink hair-dos and long red beautiful nails. They would fight for desirable table places like protocol officers. A hundred bitter complaints from VIPs always followed a trip like this.

Curl looked out of the window to see what the President was watching. Seemingly endless wheatlands passed beneath the wings. From thirty thousand feet the ground shimmered like beaten gold. No matter about all those corn-belt gags, Curl thought, this was the heartland of America. Here lay its moral strength, or its moral weakness.

Curl waited until the President glanced up at him again. The old man was scrolling another Congressional headcount through his fingers. He'd be counting each vote and remembering each voter. Once his favourite tactic had been trading bridges, military bases, highways and airports for the votes he needed. Now he seemed to be losing the knack. He'd never beat the record set by Lyndon Johnson, who had had every Congressman visit the White House twice a year. Gruelling work, but it had paid off with 181 major measures passed out of 200 submitted.

Now the pundits were saying that without John Curl to arrange dramatic summits with world figures, and to artfully leak stories about the President's secret diplomatic coups, the Administration would be in dire trouble. As it was, John
Curl was always there; always ready to jump in and grab the hot coals.

‘That business in Spanish Guiana …' said the President. ‘How do we stand now?'

‘No sweat; these things always work out.'

The President nodded. ‘Never hesitate to do nothing. Don't I always tell you that?' He was in a good mood. He liked to escape from Washington now and again. The badgering he was likely to get from his West Coast political opponents did not trouble him. He thrived on such combat.

Curl smiled soberly and wondered whether the President really believed it had all come out well; and that it had all done so without Curl's frantic efforts behind the scenes. Perhaps the President's remarks were just for the benefit of his secretary and the Air Force aide seated behind him.

The First Lady gently pushed her way past the bagman and the Secret Service man to get to the President. She was holding two whisky sours. Even a President's wife needed some such excuse to get to him. Over the years Curl had learned to see beyond the confident smiles and warm exchanges, and now he worried at the way his chief downed half his drink in one appreciative swallow. The President looked at him as if reading his mind. Curl smiled in an attempt to hide his disapproval.

‘The last thing I wanted was any kind of confrontation between the MAMista and any identified US nationals,' the President explained.

‘No way! Ramón is being helpful right down the line,' Curl said. ‘As soon as Steve's people give the okay, we'll be helping Ramón destroy some of these coca plantations. From the air maybe.' He waited to see if there was any reaction to the defoliation idea. This was the only way to do things: ideas had to be floated gently past the chief when he was in a good mood. ‘Burning that filth is the only way to get rid of it.'

‘Now about San Diego, John. Pressing the flesh is really important to me there. I don't care if the cops have to strip
everyone bare at the door but I want to be seen moving through that auditorium brushing shoulders with the rank and file. If the cameras see me crouching behind a sheet of bullet-proof glass, we'll get some smart-ass saying I handle foreign policy that same way.'

‘Yes, Mr President. I'm watching that one.'

Curl looked out of the window again. Distorted by the Plexiglas – for not even the most powerful man in the world could get an airplane with windows you could see through clearly – he saw the other aircraft of the Presidential flight. Like this one, it had a lounge, a sitting-room, a colour TV, a stereo and a ton of communications equipment. In it there were reporters and Press aides, the masseur, four gallons of Curl's special bran and beet vitamin cocktail, the Presidential seal and flag, a bullet-proof glass screen and a cueing machine; everything needed for a quick ‘Gallup through the boonies'. Curl watched the backup plane increasing speed to overtake them. That would get the staff and the White House Press pool to the airport in time to cover the President's disembarkation.

‘Yes, Mr President. It all worked out okay.' The hell with the explanations. Wasn't it Reagan who had on the wall of the Oval Office a sign that said it was surprising how much you could get done if you didn't care who got the credit for it?

But there was one part of Curl that wanted the President to know the trouble he'd gone to. He would like to have described the negotiations with Ramón. He would like to have explained some of the difficulties of keeping Admiral Benz sweet. Most of all he'd like to have had credit for getting Steve Steinbeck to buy helicopters and other California-built hardware. God knows squeezing a fistful of nickels and dimes from an oil company amounted in itself to a Medal of Honor achievement. Then there had been all the manoeuvring and secrecy involved in having the news of the contracts break at the right time of evening on a slow
day: first came the blaring announcement followed by a delayed supplementary. That way they had grabbed the evening news headlines and had created a big explanatory splash in all the morning papers too.

 

The weather was bright and sunny in southern California. Don Arturo was sitting by the pool in the garden of his Beverly Hills mansion. He was reading
MacArthur
–
Victory in the Pacific
. His wife sat alongside him. She wore a white swimsuit and gold shoes that matched her ornate necklace and diamond-studded Rolex wrist-watch. The manservant had just brought them fresh drinks. She liked Piña Colada in the morning. He drank Bacardi with Diet Pepsi and always told her it was less fattening.

From the other side of the house he could hear the men working to uproot the Lombardy poplars. It was unfortunate. One of the poplars had some disease that turned them white, and when that happened there was no alternative but to destroy all of them.

The phone rang and Arturo snatched it up. He was waiting for a call. ‘Don Arturo?' said a voice heavy with respect.

‘Who else is it going to be?'

‘It's him, boss. No doubt about it.'

‘Where are you?'

‘I'm parked across the street from the hospital.'

‘You saw him?'

‘Sure. I took flowers. I said they were from his mother. Just like you said.'

‘What did he say?'

‘Nothing much. He seemed kind of surprised.'

Arturo chuckled. ‘I'll bet he was.'

‘And you were right about the name. He's calling himself Gerald Singer.'

‘Stay right where you are,' Arturo said. ‘We'll go public on this one.'

‘You're coming over here?'

‘Did you think I'd gone soft?'

‘No, boss. Of course not.'

‘You got all your stuff? White jacket and whatever you need?'

‘Sure thing.'

‘I don't want a lot of mess. I'm going to be wearing a suit.'

‘It'll be just like you said.'

‘About an hour,' Arturo promised. ‘Less maybe.'

‘No rush. He won't be going anywhere.'

 

Angel Paz hated to be in bed. They had given him massive doses of vitamins and he felt much better. He was only here in the hospital for observation. The polite little CIA man from the Federal Building had insisted upon checking him in for a thorough examination. Doctors had taken blood tests and X-rays and scans and urine samples. Doctors being doctors, they had found all kinds of reasons why he should stay here.

But soon he would have to escape. On Wednesday some top CIA officials were coming to ask him questions. Unless they were totally stupid, they would know from the records that Singer was a middle-aged 200-pound black man, not a slim young Latin.

Angel Paz looked at the towering flower arrangement his visitor had said was from his mother. Every flower you could think of was there. It must have cost a fortune. But Angel Paz hated it; it reminded him of the jungle. So Singer had a mother. How was she going to react when she arrived to find Angel Paz here in place of her son?

The trouble was that he had no clothes. The filthy rags he'd worn in the jungle had been stripped off him while he was still unconscious. To ask for more clothes would be to excite suspicion. The first thing to do would be to get a Los Angeles telephone book. There must be many people who
would help him get out of here with no questions asked. Not his father. His father was away; this was the time when he always went to Madrid with Consuelo. They would rent an apartment there and go to parties with all their stupid, rich, ‘high-society' friends.

He was still going through the list of possible allies when his visitors arrived.

‘Don Arturo!' said Paz, trying to sound pleased.

There was another man with him. It was a doctor in a white coat. Then he recognized the ‘doctor's' face. It was the man who'd brought the flowers. He was suddenly alarmed. Very alarmed.

‘Just saying hello,' Arturo said. He came to one side of the bed while the ‘doctor' went to the other side. Arturo leaned close. ‘Just saying hello to a treacherous thief.' From outside, through the plate glass, the hum of Los Angeles traffic filtered in. An ambulance, its siren expiring, stopped in the emergency slot below the window.

‘No, I can explain that,' Angel Paz said nervously. But the man in the white coat had a hand pressed hard upon his chest, holding him down while the other hand plastered an evil-smelling pad across his mouth and nose. He couldn't breathe, except to inhale this terrible smell. As the room softened and dribbled away, he felt a pin-prick in his arm.

‘Thief,' Arturo said. ‘I warned you. Stinking little thief.'

 

On Air Force One, the communications-room staff was alerted by a red light on one of the wire-service Teletypes. A Signals Corps lieutenant got to his feet to watch it. The electric motor whined and the keys typed the coded prelims.

The lieutenant tore the story off the machine and dumped it into the waste. His orders stated that the only news stories to be taken up front to John Curl were those that concerned international affairs. Murders in Los Angeles, no matter how bizarre the circumstances, did not come into that category.

It was in any case a bit late for anything to go upfront. The President and First Lady were both getting last-minute titivations from their respective hairdressers and make-up experts. The plane was approaching the landing pattern. The controllers had closed the airport to all traffic except Air Force One. Airport cops kept the cars moving round and round without stopping. TV trucks and news cars – special red-striped stickers on their windshields – were lined up along the apron. California was pregnant with elections. Campus speeches were getting front-page coverage and the utterances of aerospace trade union leaders were getting headlines. Like the next episode in a popular soap, the President's arrival was exactly the story the media now needed.

The reporters had sharpened their pencils ready to stick them right through his heart. The Press here would have no easy questions for him: they had a reputation to maintain.

The Presidential Flight came into the landing pattern. The last of many microphones was clipped to a stand which now almost obscured a seat in the VIP room facing the empty chair, a firing squad of cameramen sighted along their film and video lenses. Flood-lights gave a harsh unflattering crosslight.

California was ready to welcome the President of the United States of America.