Siege of Silence Page 12

  I was momentarily confused, then understood and looked down at my shoes.

  “Yes, Mr President. I always wear them.”

  He had beamed. “So do I. When I’m out of uniform of course. Best shoes in the world. What size do you take?”

  “Ten and a half. Triple Es.”

  “Good. My Embassy in Washington sends me regular shipments. I’ll instruct them to include your size.”

  I started to say something about Foreign Service regulations but he waved that aside and approached with his hand out. After we shook hands he sat down behind his desk and I resumed my seat.

  Vargas could have stepped out of a McNelly cartoon. Short body, short neck, short legs. Tight blue and gold bemedalled uniform. Gold rings on short fingers; pudgy face, small narrow eyes just discernible behind the obligatory dark glasses. He lacked only a wide moustache to complete the picture of a banana republic dictator. I recall wondering why most dictators are short. Two things in my life give me acute pain. The damned gout and the fact that all too often the first instruments of defence in Latin America against the communists are people like Vargas.

  He said, “I enjoyed your book on contemporary Latin American literature.”

  I was jolted by the idea of Vargas reading any books at all, let alone mine.

  “But I was surprised at your treatment of Marquez. Especially coming from the author of Evils of Communism. Was it only because he’s a Nobel Laureate?”

  “No. As I said in the book, the beauty of his language, if anything, obscures his philosophy.”

  He had shrugged as if beauty was banal. “He’s a dangerous subversive. I must tell you I am very pleased with your arrival. To be honest your predecessor did not fully understand our special position here and failed to communicate our feelings to your Government properly. I have heard good reports of you, and of course your disgust of communism is well known from your writings.”

  He stood up and started pacing in front of me. Light from the crystal chandeliers reflected like tiny arrowheads from high black boots. His voice slowed and became emphatically formal.

  “It is essential that we receive the full military and civil aid package promised by your Government . . . by your President. The subversives grow stronger. They terrorize the people, disrupt the economy, spread the cancer of communism and pose, in the long run, as great a threat to your country as mine.”

  He paused, leaned forward and looked gravely into my eyes. “And Mr Peabody, they are being armed, supplied and indoctrinated by your greatest enemy, Russia, through their lackeys: Cuba, Nicaragua and others. Yet, even while your Congress talks and delays and listens to lies our life-blood is being sucked by the vampires of Marxism.”

  “Excellency, my Government is doing everything possible to get the aid package through. As you know, the balance, particularly in the Senate, makes things very difficult. The President himself is spending a lot of time with individual Senators. It’s the human rights problem.”

  “Human rights!” He spat the words out like broken teeth. “The President himself has certified that there is improvement.”

  “True, but some Senators don’t believe him. Others think that it’s not enough.”

  “What do they know?” Angrily he resumed pacing. “They choose to believe traitors and leftists! Putas like Lopez!”

  Without sympathy, I said, “He was your Ambassador in Washington, Excellency; and is your own brother-in-law.”

  He swallowed to control his anger. “He wanted to replace me. He plotted with others . . . Only when I recalled him did he defect. A traitor. But they call him to your Congress and listen to him!”

  “His testimony is damaging,” I conceded. “But not so much as the continuous killings and disappearances.”

  “That’s improved,” he countered sharply.

  “Only marginally. From 152 last month to 131 this month; and it’s still got four days to run.”

  Vargas had shrugged dismissively. “It takes time. There is much passion in the country. My people hate the subversives. It is not always easy to control them.”

  “But Excellency, in twelve months there have been more than 1,500 killings and disappearances. Not one person has been convicted or even tried.”

  He spread his hands. “Courts need proof. It is hard to get.”

  “I’m sure it is, but Congress votes in two weeks and not even the President’s personal intervention may save the aid package.”

  He passed a hand over his face. Rings glittered. “Only three days before you arrived, Bowman, your deputy, was here at a reception. He congratulated me on the progress we are making. Told me he was preparing a report for your signature emphasizing that.”

  “That’s correct. It’s on my desk.”

  “You will send it?”

  Slowly I shook my head. ‘I’ll send my own. But not for ten days. And its contents will depend on three conditions.”

  “Conditions?” Amazement was creeping over his face.

  “Yes, conditions.” I had let my previously submissive attitude slip away. “For me to send a report and recommendation similar to Bowman’s, genuine progress will have to be made- and within ten days, before it’s too late. Otherwise I report negatively.”

  Vargas’s mouth opened with astonishment. I could see gold fillings on his back teeth. Neither his brain nor his ego could believe that he heard the words. I went on, “The first condition: the killings and abductions stop. Don’t tell me it’s impossible. We know they are directed by your brother Colonel Jaime Vargas from an office in the north wing of this very building. I assume you approve the names of the victims. Second: the university is to re-open, the four detained lecturers are to be released and either they resume their duties or they are allowed to leave the country. Third: the officers commanding that company of the Marazon brigade which carried out the massacre of Mestizos in Higo province last April be immediately brought to trial.”

  Vargas stood there like a squat volcano. I wished I could see behind those glasses into his eyes. Abruptly he turned and walked to a high window. I could see the view over his shoulder. The expanse of the Plaza de Esteban Chamarro, and then the national football stadium and behind it the dull ochre walls of the university.

  He turned and started talking. First the university. It was the womb of revolution, spawning the germs of destruction. He was eloquent in anger; precise in memory. The names rolled out: Roberto Bermudez, Carlos Fombona, the “puta” Maria Carranza and others. All of them had gone out of that place to the mountains- all of them communists with the obscene arrogance to name their movement after the founder of San Carlo: Esteban Chamarro- at this moment rotating in his tomb in the cathedral. The memory of the man who had washed in the blood of the Spanish was now painted in the red of Marx, his name libelled in propaganda for the illiterate.

  Bermudez, from a poor family, had been given by the generosity of the Vargas family, a scholarship to the university. His thanks were to bite the hand, and sharpen the teeth of his contemporaries.

  Fombona, son of a Colonel no less. A drug addict for sure. Hating his father. Hypnotized by Bermudez- becoming his right arm- even more vicious- educated at the university.

  Carranza the witch. The puta! Her cunt a whirlpool sucking in the ignorant. Blinding them in sperm! All of them graduates of the university. The university endowed by the Vargas dynasty. Should he open it again like an old wound so as to bleed him to death?

  My answer had been succinct. “You cannot fight communism with ignorance. The university must re-open.”

  We glared at each other. Then Vargas talked of the death squads. Argentina had stifled communists by using their own methods against them- terror. So had Uruguay and Chile. It worked. The only way to deal with them. They are all vermin.

  I answered, “The killings must stop. For every death of a genuine communist you kill maybe five innocents. For every death of an innocent you create five communists. It’s an equation of disaster.”

  He swit
ched the subject. How could he prosecute officers for carrying out orders? The Mestizos of Higo had harboured the communists- sustained them. They were accomplices in murder and deserved the same fate.

  Coldly, I reminded him. “Eighty-five children under ten. They didn’t even waste bullets! Just smashed their heads with rocks. A child that young cannot have an ideology- cannot be a communist. It was murder- cold-blooded murder!”

  Vargas gave up on explanations. His anger distilled into cold formality.

  “Tomorrow my Washington Ambassador will convey to the State Department our displeasure at your appointment- our inability to work with you. They are not Congress- no primitive voting. It is certain you will be recalled.” He smiled, cocooned in his ego.

  I said, “Probably. It’s also a certainty that on my return to Washington I’ll be called to testify before the Senate Appropriations Committee. Excellency, here I’m a ticking bomb. There I explode.”

  “Your career would be finished.”

  “It’s almost over anyway. I retire in a couple of years.”

  “You could retire a rich man- rich beyond your dreams.”

  I stood up. “I have enough money . . . and I seldom dream. Understand me clearly. I represent the country which sustains you. I abhor you and your principles, but I abhor communism more. I will be an instrument in your sustenance but only under the conditions I outlined.”

  Now as I look down at the little recorder I hear my parting words.

  I had walked to the door and turned. He was standing very still on the red carpet, a dictator shimmering under the chandeliers.

  “Vargas, the world of extremes is not flat. It curls around and melts into itself- you are at the joining point.”

  From the loudspeaker I hear the click of the door as I went out. The tape curls on until Calderon rouses himself, reaches out and pushes a button.

  He slumps back in his seat. Silence. I raise my head and look at him. He gazes back. Today he’s wearing a white shirt with a frilly ruff down the front, unbuttoned halfway down the chest. He looks like he’s about to produce a set of balls and do a juggling act. I tell him so scornfully. He just goes on gazing at me, then says, “Who would believe those were the words of Jason R. Peabody, Ambassador to San Carlo of the United States of America? A man whose political philosophy is slightly to the right of Ghengis Khan.”

  “What’s so hard to believe?”

  He stands up and stretches languorously. I’m conscious of my own cramped muscles. I haven’t had exercise for more than a week; or had a taste of the outside air; but I’m not going to ask him any favours. He sits down again.

  “Peabody, you are an enigma. You’ve got Ambassadors all over the world paying lip-service to human rights. You’re the least likely candidate to really believe in it, but from the evidence of that tape you do.”

  “Why should that be difficult to believe?”

  He smiles: “Maybe you don’t understand yourself. Tell me. If Vargas had not been overthrown what do you think would have been the result of your little lecture?”

  “Not much. He would have toned things down for a while.”

  “Exactly. After you left he called his brother in. It’s also on tape. He told him to suspend the killings for a couple of weeks, re-open the university but cover the lecturers and find a couple of junior officers to serve as scapegoats for the Mestizo massacres.”

  I believe him. It’s logical.

  Fascinated, he says, “But you genuinely loathed him. Had he done nothing you would still have urged your Government to give him aid. Why?”

  I point at the recorder. “You heard me. I abhor him. But I abhor communism more.”

  He is shaking his head in puzzlement. He points a finger at me.

  “Peabody, we are going to talk about this. Now. Maybe for hours. Don’t get negative with me. Don’t indulge yourself by standing on your dignity. You are glad I’m here. You need to talk. After three days alone you were glad to see me. Don’t deny it. I need a name and you are going to give it to me because you will want to.”

  “Calderon, as usual you indulge yourself on delusions.”

  He smiles. “No, Peabody. First understand this. The name you give me will lead me to the others. Don’t grieve for them. They will not die. They will be re-educated.”

  I laugh, genuinely amused. “I’m sure. Like your namesake Jorge Arrango.”

  He is immediately angry. “He was a plantado. Yielded nothing. Could see nothing of the progress under Fidel. Even his poetry was lousy.”

  I also find myself angry.

  “So bad poetry can result in twenty years of imprisonment and maltreatment; physical and mental?”

  He leans forward and says very earnestly,

  “Peabody, you must listen to me. Every revolution has its victims. To find a cure for meningitis maybe half a million monkeys died. Progress demands sacrifices. Thousands were arrested after the revolution. Most of them responded to logic and persuasion. Most of them are now active in our society.”

  “And those who don’t respond?”

  “There are less than two hundred.”

  “And life is not great for them.”

  He shrugs indifferently and I say sarcastically, “You’re telling me that if I give you a name, which anyway I don’t have, that person will merely have his wrist slapped. Be given a strict talking to and persuaded by logic to give up all his naughty thoughts. Calderon, you insult both my intelligence and your own.”

  He thinks for a moment and then nods in agreement. “But they won’t be maltreated. I’ll be doing the interrogations myself. No matter. Now we are going to examine the roots of your ideology. But first, Peabody, why did you keep going to the airport?”

  I feel immediate mental discomfort. A child caught in the act of misbehaviour. Quickly I say, “You’d better change the subject or it’s the end of the conversation.”

  SLOCUM

  Fort Bragg

  Day 10

  I’m at work. Sitting in a jeep on the edge of a disused airstrip. Komlosy is next to me. We are both looking up into the clear sky, at the circling Ultralights. At five thousand feet they are tiny specks, like a flock of wheeling vultures.

  “There are more than twenty,” Komlosy says.

  “Twenty-four, sir. I got five back-up men in case of injury during training, or sickness. Watch now, they’ve cut the engines. They’re coming down.”

  The flock breaks up and rearranges itself into four groups. They separate and begin a spiralling descent. A dozen giant white crosses have been painted about thirty metres apart on the concrete runway. There are two men standing to one side talking into hand-held radio sets. They are wearing jeans and wind-breakers and baseball caps.

  “What are those guys doing?” Komlosy asks. “They’re civilians?”

  “Uh huh. They’re giving me a helping hand, sir. I cleared it with Brigadier Simmons.”

  “Who are they?”

  “The shorter one is Larry Newman. The tall one is his partner Bryan Allen. Two of the most innovative and adventurous guys in aviation.”

  Komlosy is sceptical. “They look damned young.”

  I laugh. “Sir, I guess Newman is in his late thirties. He first flew at age twelve. At twenty-one he was qualified on Lear jets. Since then he’s flown F16s, F18s, 1011s, even Concorde. Besides that, he’s a helicopter pilot, a top flight instructor, a sky-diver and a balloonist. Fact is, he was one of the three guys who flew that balloon over the Atlantic.”

  “Ah. I heard about him.”

  “Allen is around thirty. He’s a world class pilot and cyclist. He won the prize for being the first person to fly across the English Channel using only human power.”

  Quietly Komlosy says, “I heard about him too. As you’d say, a couple of highly talented cats. What do you have to pay guys like that?”

  “Sir, for a job like this you don’t have to pay guys like that. They’re probably the two best Ultralight instructors in the world. Some of my squ
ad had flown them before, others hadn’t. Believe me they’re learning fast. Now watch.”

  The first two groups are coming in. There’s about a ten knot head wind. They turn gracefully into it. The canard wings lift and they look to be hardly moving as they approach. Silently, one by one, they slide on to the concrete. Most are right on the crosses, some overshoot by a metre or two. One lands a little short: they come to a stop after about thirty metres. The pilots quickly step to the ground and pull their crafts clear and into line. A minute later the other two groups come in with similar performances.

  With satisfaction I say, “Not bad. Not half bad.”

  The pilots are congregating around Newman and Allen. Komlosy says, “Shall we go over?”

  “No, sir. They’re being debriefed. Let’s wait awhile.”

  He lights a cigarette. “Colonel, when we’re alone you don’t have to call me ‘sir’.”

  “Thanks, Mr Komlosy.”

  “Mike.”

  “Okay. I’m Silas.”

  We sit in companionable silence for a few minutes, then he says, “They look easy to fly, but I guess it’s tricky at night . . . and in combat conditions.”

  “It’s more complicated, sure. You’ll see it tonight at the mock-up.”

  The group of men breaks up. Two of them go back to their machines, start the engines, taxi clear and take off Allen and Newman stroll across towards us. We get out and I make the introductions. Allen is shy and respectful in the presence of a top White House figure. Newman is ebullient and respectful. Komlosy is grateful and respectful. There’s a little mutual hero-worshipping going on.

  He says expansively, “I want to thank you guys for what you’re doing. It’s a great job. Just great.”

  They mumble a few modest words. I say, “They’re coming on real fine, the guys.”

  Newman grins. “Silas, you picked a bunch of naturals. Another week an’ they’ll be able to fly up a gnat’s ass.”

  Allen points up at the two circling Ultras. “I sent Brand and Kerr up to do half an hour of touch and goes. After that I guess everyone should rest up for tonight.”