by Morris West
‘Yes?’
‘I presume you’ll be getting in touch with your family?’
‘Of course. I’ll use the ship’s radio as soon as we’re out of Argentine waters. Why do you ask?’
‘Don’t let them expect too much, especially your daughter. You’re taking home an invalid – a permanent invalid; and he’ll never be able to mate with a woman again.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
In the old, walled garden of the Bay House, summer was in early flush, with a profusion of rose-blooms and lavender, a bourdon of questing bees, pears ripening against the warm stones of the wall, the spaces between the mullioned windows hung with clematis. The sky was blue above the mirror-pool, where golden carp swam lazily among the lily-pads; the shadow of the gnomon lay sharp and clear across the antique brass of the sundial.
In the centre of the eastern wall, sheltered from the search of the sea-cold, there was a large, semi-circular alcove, roofed with red tiles and set with rustic furniture, where on the good days the master of the house might divert himself with his friends and delight in the sweet contrivance of his domain. This day, Rodolfo Vallenilla was there, a small humped figure in a wheelchair, dozing sometimes, then, in brief bursts of energy, writing in a child’s exercise book, while Teresa watched, smiled approvingly, and bent again to her needlepoint. For John Spada and Anna, watching from the window, there was an odd pastoral pathos in the scene.
‘… As if they were the old ones,’ said Anna sadly. ‘And we were the young, with all our lives in front of us.’
Spada put a protective arm around her shoulders and drew her to him.
‘Don’t brood on it, Anna. They’re counting their own blessings.’
‘I don’t brood.’ Anna denied it stoutly. ‘But Teresa talks to me sometimes. She says she doesn’t miss the sex part; after what they did to her she has no want for it. But she worries about Rodo. He feels broken and useless. She has to encourage him all the time to write, because he has important things to say; but, when he gets tired, he frets like a baby.’
‘You can’t blame the poor devil. Part of him wants to record what he’s been through; the other part wants to forget it. Teresa has the same problem. For the present, the best we can offer them is here: a quiet place and cherishing when they need it.’
‘And what about you, amore?’ Anna laid a soft hand on his cheek. ‘What do you need?’
‘What I have, I suppose.’ Spada was suddenly moody and withdrawn. ‘You – and a lot of work to keep me busy.’
‘I haven’t been much help to you lately.’
‘Have I complained?’
‘No; but it happens to us women; the children always seem to need us more than the husband, especially when he’s a strong one like you. It’s not good for us, you being so much in town and me out here with Teresa and Rodo. But they still need me around.’
‘I know.’ Spada bent and kissed her dark hair. ‘We’ll work it out.’
‘It’s a pity you stepped out of the business. You need to be busy now.’
‘No!’ Spada was a shade too emphatic about it. ‘Make no mistake, Anna! Since I bought out the Poseidon Press I’ve been busy as hell reorganising. We’re setting up foreign language subsidiaries, and a computer system for storage and retrieval of data. Give us three months more and we’ll be pumping out some really sensational material.’
‘What sort of material?’
‘I told you . . .’
‘I know you told me.’ Anna was penitent. ‘I listened; but I didn’t hear half of it – and the rest I didn’t understand. Don’t be angry with me, amore. It’s just that Teresa and Rodo were more important.’
‘Sure they were! But now we have to use their experiences to help others, thousands of others, all over the world. The greatest weapons of tyranny are silence and false report. We’re going to break the silence and publish true records of what goes on around the world: lists of political prisoners, factual accounts of what has happened to them and their families, names, addresses, personal histories of those who engage in the trades of torture and terror. Our Proteus people will gather the information. We’ll record it, cross-check it, publish it in regular bulletins until, one day, please God, the villains will be afraid to show their faces in civilised society. It’s a big job, a long job, but it could be the most important I’ve ever attempted.’
‘The most dangerous, too.’ Anna shivered and clung to him. ‘I hate the way we’re living now, with guards at the gate and on the beach – people following us wherever we go.’
‘It’s necessary, Anna. Dictators have long arms.’
‘But now you’re creating more danger, inviting new threats.’
‘What should I do? Stay silent? Let the evil men flourish?’
‘There’s no need to get angry. I have a right to say what I feel.’
‘Look out there!’ Spada pointed towards the summer-house, where Teresa was settling the covers round a dozing Rodo. ‘The men who put them through the mincer still walk free and respectable in the sunlight. Some of them seem to be quite ordinary people. They wash the blood off their hands after a day’s session, put on clean clothes and go home to caress their wives and fondle their children. Because their trade is invisible, they’re ignored, like embalmers or sewage men. They flourish by tacit consent of ordinary folk, who want to see the streets clean and the trains run on time and their houses safe from thieves in the night. The taxpayers pay their wages They are promoted in civil and military lists. They walk safe in the open while their victims rot in cells a hundred yards from the city square . . . That’s why they have to be stopped. That’s why…’
‘You’re prepared to risk us all again?’ Anna broke away from his embrace and challenged him in tearful anger. ‘Haven’t you done enough? Will we never again have a moment’s peace?’
The next moment she was gone, running up the stairs to their bedroom. He heard the door slam and the key turn in the lock. He stood, like a stone man, staring out at the summer garden. Never in his life had he felt so empty, so utterly desolate.
He was normally too proud to bandy complaints around his family; but this time he found himself not only distressed, but totally disoriented, as if he were half drunk and committing a foolishness that made others embarrassed. He walked out into the garden and beckoned to Teresa to stroll with him on the lawn while Rodo still dozed in his wheelchair. When he told her of Anna’s outburst, she seemed oddly defensive.
‘… You don’t see it, Papa, because you’re always on the move, always in action. Mama’s in the bad years now. She needs tenderness, stability – the special feeling of growing safely into middle age with the man she loves. What happened to me and to Rodo was a terrible shock for her. You weren’t here to see it all; but…’
‘For Christ’s sake!’ Spada was suddenly ablaze with anger. ‘How could I see anything? I was down in Buenos Aires, risking a dozen lives to get your husband out.’
‘Please, Papa! That’s not what I mean.’
‘Then say what you mean I I’ve got a right to hear it, straight and plain. Yes or no?’
‘Yes, Papa! Yes! Yes! But don’t you understand? I’m the wrong one to ask.’
‘Why?’
‘Because Rodo and I are casualties. They broke us! Oh yes, we’re putting ourselves together again, one piece every day; but we’ll never be front-line fighters again. Every day we look at the newspapers and see some terror story that brings back the nightmares. We’re scared, because we know we’re conditioned like Pavlov’s dogs and we’re incompetent to handle any more risks.’
‘So I’ve stepped in to fight in your stead. What’s wrong with that?’
‘We’re afraid of you too!’
Her vehemence shocked him. He recovered after a moment and then asked calmly enough:
‘Would you feel happier if I pulled out? Surrendered?’
‘Happier, no! Safer, yes. But we have no right to ask it.’
‘I’m damn sure you haven’t.’ An
ger took hold of him again. ‘I’ve been a good husband, a good father. Neither you nor your mother has a right to turn me into a eunuch!’
‘Papa, please . . .!’
‘Shut up and listen! I don’t want to live like a slave, grovelling to a goddam jack-in-office, scared to go to the can because some half-assed anarchist may have planted a bomb under the seat! If I’m a threat to you or your mother, or Rodo, I’ll go away, draw the fire somewhere else. But there’s no way I’ll sit here, doing nothing, while the bully-boys take over the world! I’m going to fight, bambina – and to hell with Queensberry rules!’
‘Papa, for the last time, listen to me!’
‘I’m listening.’
‘Enough!’ Rodolfo Vallenilla wheeled himself between them like a charioteer. ‘Be quiet, Teresa! John, I was once a man like you. Now I would not last ten minutes with the interrogators. But I tell you, go your own way. Fight your own battle! We will support you with the little strength we have!’
‘And what about Mother?’ Teresa rounded on him furiously. ‘Doesn’t she have any rights?’
‘Yes, she does,’ said Rodolfo Vallenilla. ‘But she claims them from her husband, not from her daughter. Can’t you see what’s happening, Teresa? You’re doing exactly what the villains hope. They want us scared, quarrelling, hating one another.’
‘I want some peace!’ The words came out in a plaintive cry.
‘In Martín Garcia I begged a man to kill me,’ said Rodo bitterly. ‘Because I wanted peace, just as you do now.’
‘Maybe it would have been better if we’d both died!’
‘Never say that again!’ said Spada softly. ‘Good men risked their lives for you and Rodo. Murder was done because of you; and now you spit in our faces! Rodo, try to talk some decency into your wife!’
He turned on his heel and left them, striding across the lawn like an angry giant. Then, minutes later, he was gone, driving furiously up the parkway, choked with the bitterness of rejection.
‘What did you expect, lover?’ Maury Feldman sketched a muscly Narcissus admiring his sex in a lily-pond. ‘You’ve stepped through the looking-glass into a different dimension. There’s no way your family can understand you any more . . . Come to that, I don’t understand you very well myself!’
‘Christ! How simple do I have to make it? What did you do in the holocausts, Daddy?’
‘You son-of-a-bitch!’
‘That I can understand.’ Spada snatched the pencil from his hand and snapped it in two. ‘My family’s been violated. An old friend has been murdered. I want to fight the butchers. So I’m a son-of-a-bitch! Fine! Suppose I sit down and swallow it and say “Thank you, doctor! That medicine makes me feel good.” What am I then, eh?’
‘You’re a wise man who doesn’t push his luck too far. You’re a good husband who protects his wife and family.’
‘And that’s enough?’
‘For me, yes – but I don’t have a wife or a family.’
‘It’s not enough for me,’ said John Spada.
‘What do you want then – justice or vengeance?’
‘Justice!’
‘No way you’ll get it.’ Maury Feldman picked out another pencil from his tray and turned back to his sketching. ‘I’m a servant of the law and I tell you justice is an illusion – unless the Almighty keeps better accounts than He seems to.’
‘Let’s say then, I’m looking for punitive damages.’
‘It’s a hard suit to win.’
‘Because there’s no court of jurisdiction.’
‘Right.’
‘But there’s still the court of public opinion – which is why I’ve gone into the publishing business.’
‘I’ve thought about that.’ Maury Feldman put down his pencil, clasped his hands behind his head and stretched his legs under the desk. ‘I’ve thought about it very carefully, because you’re a good client and you pay well on the due date. You’re going to publish a series of dossiers on terror – institutional terror, revolutionary terror. You’re going to collect evidence: names, dates, places, personal histories of victims and tormentors alike . . . You’re going to circulate this information round the world.’
‘You’re damn right I am!’
‘And you’ll personally guarantee every item you publish is the truth?’
‘As far as I can, yes?’
‘How far is that, lover?’
‘With the systems I’m installing, a bloody long way.’
‘But it’s still not a hundred-per-ent guarantee . . . No! Don’t pounce on me! Sit still and listen! There’s an elementary fact about terrorists and political criminals. They use false names, fictitious identities, as you yourself did in Argentina. What happens if you name the wrong man and someone tosses a bomb into his living-room and kills his wife and kids? What happens if you lay a false charge against a guilty man and he sues you for libel or defamation – and goes scot free at the end of it? What happens if an intelligence service feeds you false information and destroys your credibility at the outset? What happens if you publish the right information and they put out a contract on your life and the lives of your family or your employees . . .?’
‘All good questions, Maury. Now, here’s one from me. What happens if I do nothing?’
‘You’ll die quietly in bed,’ said Maury Feldman wearily. ‘And I’ll sit Shivah – which won’t help you, but it’ll make me feel better, because you’re a great dumb goy and I love you! . . . Do you want me to call Anna?’
‘No. She’ll come round.’
‘Teresa?’
‘I’ll let that one ride too for a day or so . . . How are things at the store?’
‘Fine. Mike Santos is doing a good job. We’ve almost tied up the purchase of the Raymond Serum Laboratories. Spada Nucleonics has solved the cladding problem and there’s a reasonable compromise with the clients on costs. Liebowitz is quiet for the time being . . . Kitty’s getting restless though. She wants to quit and join your publishing venture.’
‘I could use her right now.’
‘Talk to Mike first.’ Maury shrugged off the subject and then frowned unhappily over a new thought. ‘I wanted to suggest something…’
‘What?’
‘A visit to Washington, a quiet chat with Hendrick at State. You’re not very popular there at the moment; and the company lobby’s not very welcome either.’
‘What’s the complaint?’
‘Oh, lots of little things!’ Maury was theatrically casual. ‘Rumours and gossip that are very embarrassing to Secretary Hendrick.’
‘Like what?’
‘Like that you’re a big contributor to Marxist funds in Europe. That you worked with the ERP in Argentina. That you’re an accessory with them to the murder of a prison commandant . . . The Argentines are doing a beautiful hatchet job on you.’
‘Okay. I’ll go down to Washington soon and say my party piece. Also, I want to talk to Ambassador Kolchak. The Lermontov affair is hanging fire too long.’
‘Now that you’re a friend of the Party, the Russians may be more amenable!’ Maury’s grin was deliberately provocative. ‘You’re quite a notorious figure, one way and another. I shouldn’t be surprised if you were getting a little attention from the CIA and the FBI.’
‘Any evidence to that effect?’
‘Some. Mike Santos has been asked to send in an updated list of security clearances. The timing’s a bit unusual. If I were you, I’d have your apartment checked for bugs.’
‘Oh, brother! That sort of harassment I need like the measles.’
Maury Feldman shrugged and bent again to his sketching.
‘I told you, lover. You’ve stepped through the looking-glass. You’d better be prepared for some curious encounters – dangerous ones too, perhaps.’
‘The family’s protected night and day. I’m covered as well as I can be; but there’s no protection on a city sidewalk.’
‘I guess not . . . But take care, eh? If you die, I lose an awful lot
of revenue.’
He had known Maury Feldman too long to take the warning lightly. They had climbed together from back alley business to the heady crags of big money and high politics. Up there, foothold and handhold were precarious. One slip, one jostle, was enough to send the unwary toppling back into the dark valley. So, when he reached his apartment he placed a personal call to Secretary of State Hendrick, in Washington. After a significant delay he was informed that the Secretary was in conference, but might possibly be reached at his home after seven o’clock. So far, so good – or bad. Secretary Hendrick did not want a call from John Spada entered on his office log.
His next call was to Mike Santos, who, if he kept to the traditional schedule, would have fifteen minutes to spare before the six o’clock session in the operations room. On this line too, there was a delay; but Kitty Cowan explained it.
‘Visitors, chief. A couple of buttoned-down boys from the Defence Investigative Service.’
‘What’s the subject?’
‘Security of defence projects, they say. They want an update on custody measures for documents and precautions for access to high-security areas in our plants . . . At least, that’s the documentation I’ve been passing through.’
‘How long have they been there?’
‘About an hour. They should be going in a minute. Mike was very firm that they had to be out by five forty-five . . . How are things with you, chief?’
‘So-so. Teresa and Rodo are mending slowly but Anna’s feeling the strain. So am I.’
‘We miss you around here. Why don’t you pass by and say hullo?’
‘Not my style, Miz Cowan. You know that. Why don’t you pass by and have dinner with me . . . say this evening?’
‘It’s a date. I’ll be round about eight, after the briefing conference . . . Hold on, the buttoned-down boys are just leaving. I’ll put you through to Mike.’
Mike Santos sounded frayed and out of humour with the world, but he made a brave attempt to be cordial.
‘… These boys are a real pain in the ass, John. They’re always so dead serious you’d think they had a private line to God.’
