The Three Sentinels (11 page)

As he strolled away from the pavilion to his car, speed and intentness of thinking carried on. He had no longer to concentrate on dark, set faces, the watchful eyes waiting for any threat, and
so his searching mind switched into the allied problems which he alone could solve. Henry’s vague suspicions. The approaches made to González. All dropped into place without anything
he could really call reasoning.

One couldn’t put it past a jealous Union to plan the assassination of Garay, but it was damned unlikely. As for Dave Gunner, murder would never be included or even imagined, whatever
squaring of his chin he had in mind. González was telling the truth all right about turning a blind eye to any Union agent, but had either guessed at the real objective or been deliberately
put off the scent.

He turned back from the car as if he had left some personal possession behind and called to Garay who with two or three others was politely waiting by the porch of the pavilion to see him drive
off. An instinctive impulse, yes! But the fault, if it was one, had not led him far wrong up to the present.

‘A quick word!’ he said as they met on the path half way. ‘Any luck?’

‘With what? You think you will have luck because you show your face?’

‘With Chepe’s toffee, I meant. It seemed to me you didn’t know where he got it.’

‘It could be for you, Mr. Manager.’

It could indeed. The reply was unexpectedly brutal, but probably the only cause was resentment of himself and his question. The man was naturally on edge after a meeting in which he had been
given little chance to show his hatred of the Company.

‘Or for you.’

‘No one would dare. I do not count. But no one would dare. So much for your threats!’

‘No threat from me, friend. I need you.’

‘You? Why?’

‘For one thing, nobody else can make a decent coffin.’

‘The things you say? We are not bandits. I have told you that you needn’t have a care.’

‘Then think a little! If these explosives are not for you or me, could they be for the Charca?’

‘Who would do that except the Company?’

‘That’s for you to tell me. The Union, perhaps? Any of you can see me whenever you wish.’

Rafael returned to the pavilion and reported that Don Mateo had suggested as an afterthought that no one need feel embarrassment in calling at the office. As soon as he was alone with Gil
Delgado he repeated the obscure hint but could not bring himself to disclose Chepe’s story of hidden explosives. His son’s affairs were intensely private and to be investigated only by
himself.

‘It is a trick,’ Delgado replied at once. ‘He means to cut off our water and pin the blame on someone else.’

That might be so. Rafael accepted that his colleague was cleverer than he. On the other hand Gil had not the gift of trust. One could not begin to explain to him that a man was not to be judged
wholly by his words or even by his eyes. He was there and you were there and a thing passed from one to the other.

‘There are no Union agents among us,’ Gil went on. ‘But remember that not all of us like poking with a hoe and Don Mateo must know it.’

‘I do not understand him,’ Rafael said. ‘He seems half on our side.’

He expected to be laughed at, but Gil replied impatiently :

‘Of course he is! He still hopes that we will return to work without damage or bloodshed.’

Well, they would not, and let him hope! Rafael was irritated by all the subtle contradictions of this man who sat back and almost encouraged the development of a Cabo Desierto without oil.

Gil was right on one point. The Union had no active agents among the workers. There might be sympathisers, but not one of them would agree to blowing up the Charca or had the knowledge to do it.
The man who, unknown to himself, had given Chepe a ride in his truck came from outside. If he had any collaborator in Cabo Desierto it must be Lorenzo or some other trusted servant of the
management.

Rafael slipped away to the empty beach beyond the tank farm where he strolled up and down among the refuse, stopping from time to time to allow for the instinctive gesture of scratching his
head. That the stranger had come overland was most improbable. He had brought a small truckload of boxes as well as himself. Then he must have come in one of the company launches with the
connivance of González. During the boycott all passengers had to show their identity cards and explain their business to the police on the quay. God alone knew what González did, all
dressed up in his office, but one could always hear two typewriters clacking.

The arrangements had obviously been made before the new General Manager’s arrival, but whatever González knew, Don Mateo would. So Gil might be partly right. Yet Don Mateo was to be
trusted. That was the only certain fact: a man. Then if the Company and its launches were not involved, the explosives could only have arrived by fishing boat.

Next day Rafael began enquiries. The operation got on his nerves. He had no faith in his ability to ask questions and conceal his motive, for no sort of intrigue had ever disturbed the plain
honesty of a life spent between Catalina and the carpenter’s bench. The fish buyers in the market talked freely, finding it natural that he should show curiosity about supplies. Not so many
boats put in, they said, as before the boycott, and only when they had a lot of coarse fish which Cabo Desierto could afford. Captains and crews were all well known. Rafael asked whether individual
fishermen ever did any private business in the town. Yes, they might if they had got their fingers on something saleable, but nothing larger than a bottle or a box of cigars.

A dead end. He was no use as a detective. Well, but he was accepted as a leader and his orders were always eagerly obeyed. He could not help it, but it was so. Then shouldn’t it be as easy
to find a man who could smell out truth without being suspected as a man who would charge down on the police?

He chose for his agent Antón, the little fiery mulatto who had appointed himself bodyguard. He was always a source of news in the peaceful days before the boycott, more often behind a bar
counter than in front of it—not serving or cadging a drink, but slipping in for a quick word or helping with the washing-up or reporting on business next door. He was one of those labourers,
unskilled but versatile as a gipsy, who had returned from the Capital to his shack to find wife and children dead.

Antón almost at once discovered a bit of information which Rafael’s diffident questions about fish marketing had not brought to light. The
Rosita
, a boat previously
unknown, had called at Cabo Desierto on the same day that the new General Manager arrived. It had sold cheap on the quayside and had remained overnight. The fish was not fresh, and the skipper was
suspected of having bought a job lot out at sea for sale to the hungry in Cabo Desierto.

If this was the boat which had brought the stranger and his boxes, it was easy to account for his transport. There were often empty trucks parked at night between the port offices and the quay,
ready for business unaffected by the boycott such as lifting supplies to and from the market, the port and the Company Farm. So long as a vehicle was not parked bang in the middle of the main
street the Company turned a blind eye. The weather was the same under cover or outside, and its transport could not possibly be stolen.

So it only needed a collaborator on shore to see that a truck with its ignition key in place was parked in a dark corner where no one would notice the driver. That part would fit Lorenzo very
well. He had started in the garage, was always in and out of the workshops and above suspicion whatever his activities. González might not have known anything. He and his police had no
interest in routine movements of stores continuing for an hour or two after sunset.

Rafael himself had not the time to keep watch on the old field. Talk, all the unncessary, resented talk, already allowed him too few hours for sleep. So again he delegated the job to
Antón, asking him to see that Lorenzo or anyone else who turned up between dusk and dawn in the neighbourhood of 32A was invited to explain his business. In a Christian manner, Rafael
insisted; a knife might have to be shown but must not be used if there were no resistance. He found that, like any other commander, he had to tell his intelligence officer a good deal more than he
wanted. However, the story was credible without any mention of Don Mateo; it was not essential to give an account of Chepe’s movements after he had acquired his stick of gelignite.

Mr. Manager’s hint about the Union could be correct, but that did not mean that one had to start touching one’s cap to a helpless boss. Rafael resented those searching and
inconvenient eyes when not answering them face to face. He was reluctant to admit that the explosives might be meant for the dam. It was indestructible. Sabotage of the water was an empty threat,
covering some other dirty plan.

He did at least spend an hour inspecting the Charca, giving himself the excuse of an evening walk with Chepe. The pipe line from the old field to the head of the ravine seemed a possible
objective, but what was the good of blowing it up when no water was coming down any way? Then the downstream valve or the outlets or both? But how? He knew nothing of the placing of explosives and
little of their effect.

He stood on top of the dam looking westwards at the sun resting on a copper Pacific. He felt that he was on the edge of the world and that beyond was nothing, friendly or hostile. This mood,
common among all his friends and perhaps even to those heartless technicians in their gay houses up on the ridge, was suddenly broken by a spurt of cold water on the back of his neck. Chepe jumped
up laughing from the edge of the Charca with a water pistol in his hand.

‘So that is what you learn in school!’

‘I did not go today, papacito.’

Chepe’s small possessions varied from week to week according to the objects available for barter among his schoolfellows. Whatever he had, there was no need for anxiety. It had never
occurred to him to steal.

‘Then where did you get this weapon with which you dare to squirt your father?’

‘The Man gave it to me.’

‘You must not accept presents from him.’

‘It was not a present. It was a bribe.’

‘That I can believe!’ Rafael exclaimed indignantly. ‘What did he want you to do?’

‘To go to school.’

‘Where did you meet him?’

‘Up the hill. I was looking at the window of the shop.’

In the executive suburb there was a small general store for the convenience of oil wives who had some chance of finding there whatever they had forgotten to buy in the town. It also sold toys
attractive enough for children to point at them and cheap enough for mothers to drop them in the basket with the groceries.

‘He asked me why I was not at school.’

‘And why weren’t you?’

‘Because I now know how to read and write.’

‘There are other things to learn besides reading and writing.’

‘That was what Don Mateo said.’

‘And then, Chepe?’

‘He bought this gun for me if I would promise to go to school every day for a month.’

‘And you will do so?’

‘Of course. I gave him my word.’

Rafael did not approve, but could not help being proud of this son of his who innocently wandered everywhere and even managed to be on good terms with González without involving his
father.

The significance of the water-pistol could not be missed. It was a reminder that the water supply was a pistol held at his head and that he must keep an eye on the Charca. The unfathomable mind
of Don Mateo disquieted him; he was continually being disarmed.

Next day at dusk he set a picket of four men, two on top of the dam and two on the road below where they could rouse with a shout the nearest cottages. It did not matter that they could only be
armed with pick handles. They were like soldier ants at the entrance to the nest. One signal from them, and reinforcements would swarm out to leave no more of any saboteur than broken flesh.

It was soon plain that sabotage would have been easy. A man could work all night on the Charca undisturbed. From Manuel Uriarte’s house away at the end of the cultivated land came the
occasional tinkle of a guitar if the breeze was from the north. Rafael had always imagined that behind the distant lighted windows was an austere scientist writing up his notes. There was never any
other sound unless one counted the just perceptible rustle of nightly growth as leaf and stalk adjusted to the continual, minuscule crowding of fertility.

On the old field Rafael’s other and more secret operation was quickly productive. At dawn on the third morning Antón came down with the news that his search had been successful.

‘You have got Lorenzo?’

‘No, Chief, he never appeared. But, better still, I have the explosives.’

‘Where were they?’

‘Look! Sometimes a man such as Antón is needed. He is no mechanic, but when it comes to ropes and tackle and wedges and greasing a ramp, they listen to him. A hole boarded
up—what had been there, I asked myself. What had I seen? I know the field better than you at work in your shop or Lorenzo who only drives along roads. What had I taken out of that hole which
is boarded up?’

It was like the triumphant recital of a hunter come home with meat or of a
valiente
who had left his enemy dead. Rafael waited patiently until Antón, running short of breath,
spread out his hands to invite him to repeat his question.

‘So where were they?’

‘You may well ask, Rafael! You told me to watch around 32A, but there was never any hole near it. Then I remembered a hole at 32, east of the derrick—a hole deep enough to hold a
donkey where I myself pulled out the bailing engine more than six years ago. So I went to 32. Where the hole should be were some bits of old iron scattered so that no one should walk over it and
hear his footsteps hollow. I kicked away the rubbish, and there was the cover of boards smeared with oil and gravel like the rest of the ground. And there beneath were the boxes!’