Proteus

by Morris West

His quarters outside the prison compound consisted of a neat cottage, with a flower-garden and a vegetable plot, cultivated by a former sergeant, discharged and imprisoned twenty years ago for the murder of his mistress, a male orderly and an elderly criolla from Mesopotamia who cleaned and cooked for him.

  Even his diversions were methodical. On the last four days of every fortnight he took leave of his command, always after a formal hand-over to Major Gutierrez, and was driven to Buenos Aires, where a suite was reserved for him at the Hotel Formosa. There, the same maidservant received him and demonstrated that his civilian suits were pressed, his linen and underwear laid out in the cabinet, his supply of liquor and cigars untouched since his last visit. She waited while he undressed, helped him into his dressing gown, poured him a drink and then retired, taking his soiled clothes to be laundered and his uniform to be pressed.

  Then, the routine of diversion began. Bathed and dressed in civilian clothes, he went to the Staff Officers Club to renew the acquaintance of his peers in the service. They were cordial enough – though he wondered sometimes whether the gaol-smell still hung about him; but their cordiality was less important than the service talk: who was posted where, who had moved into the political sector, what visitors were in town from frontier areas, what colleagues from Uruguay or Chile or Paraguay. It was information like this that kept a man safe, enabled him to do private favours, and build up a credit in the hierarchy.

  If the company were sparse, he would leave early; if the club were full, he would dine in and, afterwards, limp from group to group in the coffee-room to exchange salutations. With new people, the limp was as useful as a visiting card. He could always be prevailed upon to explain – albeit with casual modesty – that he had taken a bullet in a revolutionary ambush up-country, but that the bastards had fared much worse, with three dead and two who survived to tell a very long story in the Fun Palace.

  After dinner, declining the presence of any lonely fellow who might offer to accompany him, he left the club and was driven to another kind of resort, half a mile from the Plaza de la Republica. Here, an officer and a gentleman could divert himself to his heart’s content, knowing that the girls were guaranteed safe by Army medical inspectors and the house carefully guarded by the security people. Downstairs was a bar, with music and dancing; upstairs a whole complex of rooms, which could be hired, like their occupants, by the hour or the night. The tariff was high; but the risks were low; and Rosita, a smiling, bouncy matron from Mar de la Plata, always looked after her regulars.

  Colonel Ildefonso Juarez was a very regular client– loyal too, in his way. He had been known to favour one girl for three visits in succession – until, as he put it, ‘she turned old overnight; looked more like eighteen than fourteen.’ So, on this warm night of October, he had ordered a new one, trusting that Rosita would never disappoint him. When the car drew up at the entrance he instructed his driver, as always: ‘Pick me up at ten in the morning. Until then, enjoy yourself.’ To which, as always, the driver responded with gratitude: ‘The Colonel is too kind. I have to watch my pocket.’ To which he added, in an undertone: ‘But I still get more tail than you do, you old fart!’ Then he drove away towards the beach, where his cousin Luis kept a cantina and where, by three in the morning, nobody gave a damn about the pox or the police or the politicians.

  It was in this happy, noisy cellar that he had the good fortune to sit at the same bench with two pretty girls, a freakish-looking fellow who called himself Pavel or Paul something-or-other, and a big spender called Sancho, whose pockets seemed to be lined with money . . .

  ‘Our friend in there,’ Sancho jerked his thumb at the bedroom where the driver of Colonel Ildefonso Juarez was snoring happily between two girls, ‘we should give him a medal! Think how much he’s told us for the price of a couple of bottles of bad brandy. Eight days a month he’s in town with Colonel Juarez. Always Juarez goes the same route to the same places – Hotel Formosa, the Staff Officers Club, Rosita’s each night, then back again to the Hotel Formosa and home to Martín Garcia. You see how stupid these fellows are! We could knock him off any time we wanted. We could plastic his car, kill him in his hotel room, slip a pill into his bed-time drink at Rosita’s, follow him out of town and ambush him on the way . . . Beautiful, beautiful!’

  ‘Even more beautiful,’ said the Scarecrow Man amiably. ‘We don’t touch him. We leave him ignorant and happy like a grasshopper in a jar full of greenery, until we’re ready to use him.’

  ‘Let’s think how we can use him.’ Sancho was eager now. ‘Every time he comes to town he goes to Rosita’s– always between eleven and midnight. He never comes out until ten in the morning. So, we pick him up as he goes in.’

  ‘He presumes we’re security men?’

  ‘Right. They’re always in civilian clothes. They drive unmarked cars. So, if we flash a document at him, he’s not going to be too suspicious. We take him out to a safe house where he telephones the prison and tells them to make an emergency delivery of the two prisoners to the mainland. He confirms that he will be present for the delivery.’

  ‘That call will also tell us whether there have been any real calls from security.’

  ‘I like it!’ said Sancho happily. ‘It makes better sense every minute.’

  ‘Question,’ said the Scarecrow Man. ‘What do we do with the Colonel afterwards?’

  ‘You? Nothing.’ Sancho was instantly cagey. ‘He’s our bonus. You don’t have to think about him.’

  ‘Spada will want to know.’

  ‘Then I’ll tell him,’ said Sancho. ‘We’re not in bed together – just working out a contract. That’s why I don’t want him meddling in the local situation. He goes away. We’re stuck with our own bloody mess. And after this, there’ll be a lot more heat.’

  ‘Spada’s a bright fellow,’ said the Scarecrow Man. ‘He’ll understand.’

  ‘I’ve been in the game a long time,’ said Sancho quietly. ‘But Spada scares even me. He’s too quiet, too controlled. It’s like juggling with a hand-grenade – all that power inside!’

  ‘I should be getting home,’ said the Scarecrow Man. ‘This has been a very instructive evening. I want to think about it quietly.’

  ‘You’ll need transport. This is a bad area in the small hours, and you could be picked up by a police patrol. Hang on for five minutes and I’ll get you a taxi…’

  ‘No trouble. I can find one.’

  ‘I need the right one,’ said Sancho flatly. ‘This is a safe house; and I’d like to keep it that way.’

  ‘What about our drunken friend in there?’

  ‘Him? Oh, no problem. He’ll be moved out. He’ll wake up in the Colonel’s car and wonder how the hell he got there. But a foreigner stepping out of here at four in the morning – that’s news for the police bulletins! . . .’

  For three days after each return from Buenos Aires, Colonel Ildefonso Juarez indulged an insufferable good humour. As old Pascarelli put it: ‘He’s like an old hound; slobbers all over you and pisses on every chair-leg, just to let you know he can still sniff a bitch in heat.’ His officers he regaled with service gossip from the club and spicy tales from Rosita’s. His troops he teased with hints of unimaginable bawdry, available only to officers and gentlemen but, to which, one day, given good conduct and regular promotion, they might hope to aspire. For his prisoners he invented small cruelties, like tales of new security checks or dropping the names of female relatives in their hearing, and then bursting into laughter as if at some obscene comedy. Always, in this post-coital period, the tension in the cell-blocks rose to breaking point, and the guards became edgy and apprehensive.

  This time, however, the Colonel’s customary exuberance was dampened by a report from Major Gutierrez. There was an outbreak of dysentery in D block and Doctor Wolfschmidt, sober for once, had diagnosed it as Entamoeba Histolytica, highly infectious, extremely dangerous to staff and inmates alike.

  The medical measures he demanded were drastic: a massive indent
of drugs, and a drastic revision of prison hygiene. The indent must be supported by a personal explanation from the Commandant; and the hygienic measures must include an expert check on the prison water-supply, and extra staff to cope with the treatment of the patients. All of a sudden, Colonel Ildefonso Juarez saw his comfortable little kingdom fragmenting under his feet and its carefully constructed history exposed as a fiction. More dangerous still was the prospect of riot and disorder among a prison population, grossly overcrowded, more than averagely intelligent and isolated in a potential pest-house.

  So, when he strode out into the exercise yard, to inspect the shuffling parade, he was in a foul temper, snappish and cruel. Rodolfo Vallenilla, chained and squatting against the execution post, was his first and most obvious victim. Slapping his cane against his thigh, he limped across the yard, hooked his cane under Vallenilla’s chin and jerked his head up.

  ‘Well! And how is our little dog today? Getting lazy, I’m afraid. Dozing in the sun and dreaming of the bitches. We can’t have that, can we? This is exercise time I We’re supposed to move about, get the circulation going, tighten up those muscles! Up now, little dog! Hands and knees, right! Now, move! . . .’

  He slapped him twice on the rump and forced him to crawl round and round the pole, prodding and slapping and urging him to go faster and faster until he collapsed, face down on the ground, retching blood over the Colonel’s polished boots. This enraged Colonel Ildefonso Juarez and he began to belabour the prostrate man until a sudden hoarse bellow stayed his hand. He looked up, sweating, to see that the prisoners had stopped their shuffle and were ranged about him in a closed circle, hating and hostile. He shouted at them to get moving. They ignored him. He threatened that if they did not move, the guards would open fire. They stood their ground, dumb accusers, while Colonel Ildefonso Juarez swiftly weighed the consequences of a yard full of bodies as well as a lazaretto full of dysentery cases. The guards held their breath, noting with relief that the first rush would carry the prisoners inward and over the body of the Colonel. Seconds ticked away: one, two, three, four . . . and then he recovered his sanity. He snapped at the nearest guard.

  ‘You! Unchain this man!’

  Then he pointed to Chavez and Ferrer.

  ‘You and you! Carry him into the infirmary!’

  The guard hurried forward and, kneeling beside Vallenilla, unlocked the shackles. Then he looked up, witless and afraid.

  ‘He’s dead, Colonel!’

  ‘Are you a doctor?’

  ‘No, sir, but…’

  ‘Then don’t make medical decisions! Get him inside!’

  Chavez and Ferrer bent over Vallenilla. Chavez felt his pulse and laid his head against the shrunken, skeletal chest. Then he stood up confronting the Colonel. Loud and clear as a judge, he announced:

  ‘He’s alive, only just. But if he dies, you’re the killer, Colonel. We are all witnesses.’

  Then he bent, lifted Vallenilla in his arms, and carried him inside like a child. Colonel Ildefonso Juarez followed, limping behind him, while the guards moved in, shouting and shoving, to get the shuffling parade moving again. Half an hour later, Colonel Ildefonso Juarez summoned Doctor Wolfschmidt to his office, poured him half a tumbler of brandy, and questioned him.

  ‘How is Vallenilla?’

  Wolfschmidt shrugged indifferently.

  ‘Hanging on. We’ve stopped the haemorrhage, I’ve pumped him up with stimulants; but there’s not much of him left.’

  ‘Keep him alive!’ Colonel Ildefonso Juarez was emphatic. ‘If you don’t, we’re all in trouble. There’s an ugly atmosphere among the inmates.’

  ‘If you want him alive, you have to feed and house him like a human being.’

  ‘Very well. Keep him in the infirmary. Nurse him until he’s well enough to go back to the cells.’

  ‘I’ll try; but you’ve left it rather late. I can’t promise anything . . . Why the hell should you care about this trash anyway?’

  ‘Because the security people may want him again; and because I don’t want to be accused of murder, now or later.’

  ‘Well, you’ve been lucky so far. This is very good brandy.’

  ‘Help yourself.’

  ‘There’s another problem. How soon do I get my drugs and the hygiene team? This dysentery is spreading like a grass-fire.’

  ‘Can’t you confine it by quarantine?’

  ‘Not if the water supply is polluted. Not until we’ve got adequate disposal of sewage, disinfected clothing and half-way cleanliness in the cook-house.’

  ‘I’ve talked to headquarters. They’ve promised urgent action . . . Also, it would help if you stayed sober for longer hours each day!’

  ‘It helps me to stay drunk.’ Wolfschmidt tossed off his brandy at a gulp and stood up. ‘Don’t push me, my dear Colonel. I’ve buried a lot of your mistakes. Now you’re asking me to bring this one back from the dead! I have to be very drunk to make a miracle like that!’

  ‘For the love of God!’ said Colonel Ildefonso Juarez. ‘Keep the bottle!’

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  In the grey dawn of a drizzly day, the Freya, an old-fashioned freighter of 8000 tons, limped into the estuary and dropped anchor in the roadstead of Buenos Aires harbour. When the port officials boarded her for the usual pratique, her papers showed that she was bound for Callao and that she was temporarily disabled by a cracked shaft-bearing, which must be replaced before she could proceed. The replacement parts were being flown out from Holland. The formalities were quickly completed. Temporary landing permits were granted to officers and crew and, an hour later, the Captain went ashore to visit the company’s agents, Guzman Brothers. At midday he was sitting in a small waterside restaurant with John Spada, alias Erwin Hengst.

  The instructions he received were simple. For five days he would follow the normal routine of a vessel under repair. The deck crew would clean ship, chip and paint, take shore leave in the evenings. In the engine room, they would fake the clutter of a repair job, with tools and spare parts spread about in sufficient confusion to distract any casual official. On the sixth day, as late as possible, they would make ship and get clearance papers, so that they could be ready to move between midnight and dawn, as soon as the escapees were on board.

  The Captain raised an immediate problem. He could take the ship out, sure. But by regulation he must have a pilot on board until he cleared the estuary channel. Therefore, the escapees must come on board before the pilot and remain below decks until he was dropped at the channel mouth. If they tried to run without a pilot, they could be boarded and arrested by the harbour police. Either way, there was a risk, but the pilot was a lesser one.

  ‘So be it then.’ Spada nodded agreement. ‘Now there’s another problem. My son-in-law is a sick man. He’ll need medical attention. Where’s the first port we can get it?’

  The Captain looked dubious.

  ‘Montevideo is out. Uruguay and Argentina co-operate in anti-subversive measures. We could call into Rio, but I don’t like that either. If we’ve got a sick man, with no papers, on our manifest, the police will get very suspicious. The best thing would be to get a doctor on board and let us head straight back to the Dutch Antilles. From there you can fly your patient back to New York.’

  ‘What sort of medical kit do you have?’

  ‘The usual Captain’s medicine chest, but that’s not too sophisticated: oxygen, penicillin, sulpha drugs, pills for belly-ache, burn-salves, heart stimulants, splints, a few scalpels . . . it’s first-aid stuff really.’

  ‘OK. We need a doctor and a medical kit. Let me see what I can do. You’re clear on the time-table?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘Good. Then, unless there’s any change, you won’t hear from me again. Just check with the Guzman office every day in case I have to leave a message. How much will you have to tell the crew?’

  ‘Nothing. The engineer knows, of course, because he had to take the breakdown. The others will know nothing until the l
ast moment; then I’ll hand around some cash to keep them quiet until we’ve dropped the pilot.’

  ‘Then I guess that’s all-except to say “thank you, skipper”.’

  ‘My pleasure,’ said the Captain with a grin. ‘It’s better than a cargo of hides and tallow, which is what we usually ship from here. Good luck, my friend!’

  Spada’s next call was at a convent of the Missionary Sisters of the Poor, in one of the older quarters of the city. It was ten o’clock in the evening when he arrived and the Sister who answered the door protested his presence at so late an hour. The community was preparing for bed. The Mother Superior had had a long and tiring day. Tomorrow perhaps? Please, Sister, now! It was most important. Well… !

  In the small parlour, smelling of beeswax, under the blank gaze of a plaster Madonna, John Spada explained himself and his mission to the Mother Superior, a surprisingly young woman with a strong Nebraska twang.

  ‘… My daughter, Teresa, worked with you, so I felt you’d be willing to help if you could.’

  ‘I want to, of course. Teresa did great work here, and suffered terribly because of it. How is she now?’

  ‘Recovering. But it’s a slow job. Now our information is that her husband is in bad shape. I’ll need medical help if I’m to get him back alive.’

  ‘There are difficulties, Mr Spada. Any doctor who goes with you, goes into virtual exile, because he would have great difficulty in re-entering the country, since he could not demonstrate how or when he left it. While he was away his friends and relatives would be in danger.’

  ‘Perhaps then, there is someone who would like to get out, and stay out. There would be no difficulty about funds or help in re-establishing himself.’

  ‘In which case, we deprive our poor people of help which they can ill afford to lose. However, let me think . . .’ She reflected for a few moments and then went on: ‘Sister Martha will be leaving us very soon. She’s applied for release from her vows. She’s a fully-trained physician and an American citizen. If she’s willing to take the risk, I’ll release her to go with you . . .’