The Three Sentinels (14 page)

This was a shock. It had never entered Mat’s head that the man could be murdered. In prosperous times manslaughter, messy and in full view of a dozen witnesses, had not been uncommon.
Secret assassination, however, was unheard of and unnatural. He considered González’s question in silence. There was only one intrigue which could have involved Lorenzo.

‘Does the Union have any permanent agent here, Captain?’

‘Not as far as I know.’

‘Then a faithful dog could be useful. I have learned that before my arrival Birenfield had an understanding with the Union.’

‘For what I mentioned, Don Mateo? Impossible! Birenfield was correctness itself.’

‘Not arranging an accident for Garay, no. An attempt on the Charca.’

‘Outrageous!’

González’s indignation was unexpected. Mat had assumed that his only interest in the sabotage of the dam would be its effect on law and order; he should have had the opinion, normal
to any bureaucrat, that a green world which produced content was of very minor importance compared to a black world which produced wealth. Yet the Captain genuinely considered the assassination of
the land as a greater crime than that of Garay. Did he himself look forward to retirement in some flowered and fertile rat-hole ? Or was it a surge of patriotism in the sense of love of his land
and pride in the miracle performed on a waterless coast?

‘You think Lorenzo was in it, Don Mateo?’

‘I have no evidence at all. But the explosives are here. Someone must know where they are.’

‘What can I do? It is a nightmare to command police and be helpless.’

‘You have a sure way of communicating with the Union?’

‘I have a contact.’

‘See him tomorrow! I will send you in the Company’s plane to show you have my authority. You will warn those people to remove their gelignite as secretly as it came. And at once!
Tell them that if the stuff gets into the hands of the committee I shall ask for a battalion and say why.’

‘Very gladly. And Lorenzo?’

‘I suggest that you search the foreshore. Could we assume for the time being that he was accidentally drowned?’

‘And if we find him with a hole in his head?’

Then I can only pray that neither Garay nor Delgado was responsible. For your private information, dear Captain, there is a hope of peace.’

‘In that case it will be a clear case of suicide, Don Mateo.’

Rafael had never intended that Lorenzo should be killed, never imagined any necessity for it now that the explosives had been found. Murder—or execution if one wanted a
more decent name—was a blot upon the clean severity of the boycott. That troops and police would be killed if they fired was inevitable; oil workers too, of course. Rafael was prepared to
give his own empty life and equally to smash the skull of anyone who tried to take it. But to slaughter in cold blood, no! He often told himself that he was like a warder in a prison. It was his
duty to be vigilant and to punish; but so long as a man did not ask for trouble he should be treated decently and in a way that would not have offended Catalina.

Antón had sneaked off on his own to watch Lorenzo’s movements without orders and without a word. Lorenzo was unimportant. There was enough to do without wasting time on him. But
Antón was full of curiosity, a hungry curiosity like a puma on the trail of a wounded man.

‘It was not in anger, Rafael. It was just that he was not to my taste.’

‘Man, if you are going to kill everyone who is not to your taste!’

‘I tell you it was not in anger. I threw him down from behind and put the knife at his throat so that he dared not lift an arm. I asked him what he was doing in the old field. He said that
he was taking a walk. So I laughed at him and told him we had found what he was looking for.’

‘There was no need to tell him.’

‘No. I saw that too late. But a man has his impulses. So then there was nothing for it but to cut his throat.’

‘It is as if something had deserted me, Antón.’

‘Don’t worry, Chief! No one will ever know.’

‘Where is he?’

‘Down with the stuff at 32. There is no better place.’

‘And the blood?’

‘With all that oil and gravel one had only to turn the pancake upside down. Not God himself will ever see it.’

But meanwhile, leaving God out of it, Cabo Desierto bubbled and steamed with curiosity. Lorenzo was a familiar sight as he solemnly drove General Managers between the port and the ridges. In the
absence of any motive or any known enemy, it was not automatically assumed that he had been murdered. He might have set off on the overland journey, or he might have gone for a swim and been eaten
by a shark. A considerable body of opinion decided that he had remained hidden for a whole day in the Company’s plane and flown off to the Capital with González.

Under the circumstances it was easy for Rafael to shrug his shoulders. He was not in the least afraid of the law; there wasn’t any and when again there would be, nothing could be proved.
The only enquiry he dreaded was a direct question from Don Mateo. The lie he must answer mattered. He had exclaimed to Antón that something had deserted him. He couldn’t put it into
words, but, whatever it was, guilt had come in to take its place.

The affair of Antón and Lorenzo was best kept secret. The committee, however, must now be told of the windfall of gelignite and should consider what sort of weapons might be manufactured
from it. There was a full meeting that evening called by Gil Delgado. Rafael was not sure what he particuarly wanted to discuss and supposed it was his own fault for not grasping the point of
Gil’s explanation—a patter more voluble than usual about water and land and contracts.

They were all at the pavilion, all his comrades. Preliminary talk ran over the fate of Lorenzo and the reason why González had been despatched to the Capital. Presumably Don Mateo wanted
reinforcements for the police, though it was hard to see why he should. The field was orderly and even if the police had been able to arrest an oil worker there had not been any offence to deserve
it.

How well Gil spoke and how lucky it was that they had a leader who did not resent time spent in talking! Rafael listened intently at first and then with growing impatience as Gil went on about
Europe and the Americans and Fascism and the Spanish Republic and said that if you refused to accept the decisions of the majority you were left with nothing but violence. A lecture on democracy,
and what did it matter? The defence of Cabo Desierto was more important than all this hot air—defence which need not be bloody but just enough to show the Government that it would have to use
overwhelming force against the workers and face possible revolution. That was real democracy for you! Loss of life? But what about those women in the new cemetery? This would be war and the killing
of Lorenzo was murder. There was all the difference.

He woke up with a start from this wool-gathering on hearing Gil declare that the Company was willing to give guarantees for the future. If a man paid his rent he could stay in Cabo Desierto as
long as he liked and work at whatever he chose. Rafael waited for him to denounce the offer with a burst of indignation, to say that it was a bribe and to be refused. But Gil was recommending
acceptance. He was asking them to call off the boycott and return to work.

Rafael was revolted by the man rather than his proposal. Evidently Gil, behind his back, had been negotiating with Don Mateo and had then sounded opinions privately. He jumped to his feet,
shouting. He never knew that words could pour out of him like that and observed himself with astonishment—but only for a split second and without interruption of the flow. They had sworn
revenge upon State and Company. They would farm their land and there was no one to stop them. They were utterly determined that the heartless pen-pushers in the Capital should for once be compelled
to give way to the workers.

‘All the world is against us,’ he cried. ‘We have no one but ourselves whom we can trust.’

Gil was conciliatory. He begged Rafael to give his reasons, not to call names because opinions differed. They were all his friends and prepared to listen. There was no question of immediate
surrender. First, they must see what they could get in writing. Meanwhile it would be foolish to answer Don Mateo with a flat refusal.

‘So what will you answer?’

‘That is for the committee, Rafael, not for me.’

For the committee, yes. And Gil would succeed in muddling the clean issue for them until betrayal was signed and sealed.

‘Enough words! You know I am not a talker. We settle it now by a show of hands.’

He was voted down by eight to six. The six rose from the table together. Rafael, now calm, led them out and turned at the door.

‘To hell with your majority! See whether you have a majority in the street! I hold the Sentinels, Gil Delgado. You cannot go back to work without us.’

True enough. His own militant wing could not be beaten. They were able to double the pickets on the Sentinels, the refinery and the tank farm, and still patrol the streets if their opponents
asked for trouble. But a permanent solution was not so simple. What about work in the fields and what about finance? Relief funds had fallen away but there was still one useful monthly transfer to
the committee’s account.

To think that he had been on the point of telling Delgado of the windfall of explosives! God forbid that he should ever have to use them against his friends, but it might come to that if they
insisted on surrender. The thought appalled him. He blinked back tears and could not have said whether they were due to pity or rage.

His five companions tried to comfort him.

‘Man, you look as if you had seen a ghost! Delgado and his blacklegs—they are not worth it. Here we stay and no oil ever!’

‘And Don Mateo into the harbour!’

Rafael, turning his suppressed anger against the speaker, retorted that violence against foreigners, any of them, was the surest way to bring in the army.

He avoided any singling out of the General Manager, unable to express the subtle relationship between them. Don Mateo, it was true, was ultimately responsible for this defeat; he had bided his
time and split the committee. But there was no treachery in that. They had always been man against man, duty against duty. No, no harbour for him! If the worst came to the worst, he might be
forcibly shipped off to the Capital; but it was hard to see what good that would do. Unless the Company stabbed him in the back—Gil said that he had bitter enemies—his plan for Cabo
Desierto remained behind wherever he was.

Then and there, impassive and purposeful as cormorants standing on the edge of the breakwater, Rafael and his companions arranged for an action committee and a public meeting in the plaza which
they would pack with men as relentless as themselves. At last he went home. At home was no treachery. He had Chepe and the memory of Catalina.

That boy! He would have tried to cook for his father if Rafael had not absolutely forbidden him to touch the paraffin stove. As it was, he had set out on the table bread, a raw onion and a
jellied fish head in an unfamiliar plate. Rafael approached this delicate subject with caution, reluctant to spoil his son’s small triumph.

‘What have you eaten today, Chepe?’

‘At the school! Very good! We had meat as we used to at home. But I could not bring you any. I had nothing to put it in.’

‘And this splendid head? Look, what whiskers!’

‘They do not like whiskers. The man said that, by God, it was ugly but very fresh and I was to bring back the dish.’

‘What man?’

‘In the hotel. At the back.’

‘You are not to ask for anything, Chepe. It is a question of honour.’

‘I know that. I was passing and said good evening and he called me into the kitchen. He said it was for me and my father with … with … something difficult. With the Compliments of
the Management.’

‘He was very well brought up,’ Rafael said solemnly. ‘You could not refuse.’

But even at home peace could not last. The pair had hardly sat down before Chepe asked:

‘Papacito, what has happened to Lorenzo?’

‘Who knows, Chepe?’

‘Have you looked on the old field?’

‘Lorenzo does not go there any more,’ Rafael answered truthfully. ‘And I am too busy to bother with him. More busy than ever!’

‘Busy with Don Mateo?’

‘Nothing to do with him. We have other enemies now.’

‘Who, papacito?’

‘Gil Delgado, for one.’

‘He is too large. I do not much mind if you kill him. He is not to my taste.’

The echo of Antón was abominable. Not to my taste! Where would all this end?

‘Chepe, one does not kill people because one cannot agree with them.’

‘What has Gil done?’

‘He wants us to go back to work.’

‘Did you tell him we will not?’

‘I did.’

‘Then that is the end of it.’

It must be the committee, Chepe thought, that vague, exacting entity, which had made his father so preoccupied that he could not see the obvious. Of course Lorenzo had disappeared in the old
field. Perhaps he had fallen down a hole; perhaps a rotten rig had collapsed on top of him in the night. Or he might have found what he was looking for, set a stick alight and burned up as Don
Mateo said might happen. Since Papacito had no time, he himself would be useful and explore. Nobody would be about. He could call out Lorenzo’s name as well as using his eyes.

All the next day Chepe wandered through the black forest of the old field, dead as if fossilisation were silently spreading upwards through the rooted pipes. If not for the boycott there would
have been a scattering of workers on odd jobs of salvage. As it was, he saw only headquarters staff—the water engineer and the chief electrician—who both ignored him. Weary of his
search after a brave couple of hours, he lay down by the roadside in the shade of a tank and was awakened from his doze by a passing car. The car stopped and the Field Manager and Superintendent
got out. Sr. Gateson nodded a response to his polite greeting as if he had trouble in seeing anything so small. Sr. Thorpe, whom he liked, asked him what he was doing up there.