Mexico Set

by Len Deighton

  I ordered a beer and told the cantinero to have one himself. He got two bottles from the refrigerator and poured them both together, holding two bottles in one hand and two glasses in the other. I drank some beer. It was dark, strong and very cold. ‘Salud y pesetas,’ said the bartender.

  I drank to ‘health and money’ and asked him if he knew anyone who could mend my punctured tyre. He didn’t answer immediately. He looked me up and down and then craned his neck to see my Chevvy, although I had no doubt he’d watched me arrive. There was a man who could do such work, he said, after giving the matter some careful thought. It might be arranged, but the materials for doing such jobs were expensive and difficult to obtain. Many of the people who claimed such expertise were clumsy, inexpert men who would fix patches that, in the hot sun and on the bad roads, would leak air and leave a traveller stranded. The brakes, the steering and the tyres: these were the vital parts of a motor car. He himself did not own a car but one of his cousins had a car and so he knew about such things. And on these roads a stranded traveller could meet bad people, even bandidos. For a puncture I needed someone who could make such a vital repair properly.

  I drank my beer and nodded sympathetically. In Mexico this was the way things were done; there was nothing to be gained by interrupting his explanation. It was for this that he got his percentage. He shouted loudly at the faces looking in through the doorway and they went away. No doubt they went to tell the man who fixed flats that his lucky day had finally come.

  We each had another beer. The cantinero’s name was Domingo. Awakened by the sound of the cash register, the dog looked up and growled. ‘Be quiet, Pedro,’ said the bartender and edged a small plate of chillies across the counter towards me. I declined. I left some money on the counter in front of me when I asked him how far it was to the Biedermann house. He looked at me quizzically before answering. It was a long, long way by road, and the road was very bad. Rain had washed it out in places. It always did at this time of year. On a motorcycle or even in a jeep it was possible. But in my Chevvy, which Domingo called my double bed – cama matrimonial – there would be no chance of driving there. Better to take the track and go on foot, the way the villagers went. It would take no more than five minutes, maybe ten. Fifteen minutes at the most. If I was going up to the Biedermann house everything was okay.

  Mr Biedermann owed me some money, I explained. Might I encounter trouble collecting it?

  Domingo looked at me as if I’d just arrived from Mars. Didn’t I know that Señor Biedermann was muy rico, muy, muy rico?

  ‘How rich?’ I asked.

  ‘For no one does what he gives seem little, or what he has seem much,’ said the bartender, quoting a Spanish proverb. ‘How much does he owe you?’

  I ignored his question. ‘Is he up at the house now?’ I fiddled with the money on the counter.

  ‘He’s not an easy man to get along with,’ said Domingo. ‘Yes, he’s up at the house. He’s there all alone. He can’t get anyone to work for him any more, and his wife is seldom with him nowadays. He even does his own laundry. No one round here will work for him.’

  ‘Why?’

  Domingo put the tip of his thumb in his mouth and upended his fist to show me that Biedermann was a heavy drinker. ‘He can get through two or three bottles of it when he’s in one of his rages. Tequila, mezcal, aguardiente or imported whisky, it’s all the same to him once he starts guzzling. Then he gets rough with anyone who won’t drink with him. He hit one of the workmen mending the floor; the youngster had to go to the dispensary. Now the men refuse to finish the work.’

  ‘Does he get rough with people who collect money?’ I asked.

  Domingo didn’t smile. ‘When he is not drinking he is a good man. Maybe he has troubles; who knows?’

  We went back to talking about the car. Domingo would arrange for the repair of my tyre and look after the car. If the beer-delivery truck arrived it would perhaps be possible to deliver the car to the Biedermann house. No, I said, it was better if the car remained where it was; I’d seen a few beer-delivery drivers on the road.

  ‘Is the track to the Biedermann house a good one?’ I asked. I pushed some money to him.

  ‘Whatever path you take, there is a league of bad road,’ said Domingo solemnly. I hoped it was just another proverb.

  I got my shoulder-bag from the car. It contained a clean shirt and underclothes, swimming trunks and towel, shaving kit, a big plastic bag, some string, a flashlight, some antibiotics, Lomatil and a half-bottle of rum for putting on wounds. No gun. Mexico is not a good place for gringos carrying guns.

  I took the path that Domingo had shown me. It was a narrow track made by workers going between the crops and the village. It climbed steeply past the flight of stone steps that Domingo said was all that remained of an Aztec temple. It was sunny up here while the valleys were swallowed in shadow. I looked back to see the villagers standing round the Chevvy, Domingo parading before it in a proprietorial manner. Pedro cocked his leg to pee on the front wheel. Domingo looked up, as if sensing that I was watching, but he didn’t wave. He wasn’t a friendly man; just talkative.

  I rolled down my shirt-sleeves against the mosquitoes. The track led along the crest of a scrub-covered hill. It skirted huge rocks and clumps of yucca, with sharp leaves that thrust into the skyline like swords. It was hard going on the stony path and I stopped frequently to catch my breath. Through the scrub-oak and pines I could see the purple mountains over which I’d driven. There were many mountains to the north. They were big, volcanic-looking, their distance – and thus their exact size – unresolved, but in the clear evening air everything looked sharp and hard, and nearer than it really was. Now and again, as I walked, I caught sight of the motor road that skirted the spur and came in a long detour up the coast. It looked like a damned bad road; I suppose only the Biedermanns ever used it.

  It took me nearly an hour to get to the Biedermann house. I was almost there before I came over the ridge and caught sight of it. It was a small house of modern design, built of decorative woods and matt black steel, its foundations set into the rocks upon which the Pacific Ocean dashed huge breakers. One side of the house was close to a patch of jungle that went right to the water’s edge. There was a little pocket of sandy beach there, and from it ran a short wooden pier. There was no boat in sight, no cars anywhere, and the house was dark.

  A chainlink fence that surrounded the grounds of the house had been damaged by a landslide, and the wire was cut and bent up to provide a gap big enough to get through. The makeshift track continued after the damaged fence and ended in a steep scramble up to a patch of grass. There were flowers here; white and pink camellias and floribunda and the inevitable purple bougainvillaea. Everything had been landscaped to hide the place where a new macadam road ended at the double garage and shaded carport. But there were no cars to be seen, and wooden crates blocked the white garage doors.

  So Paul Biedermann had taken flight despite the appointment I’d made with him. I was not surprised. There had always been a streak of cowardice in him.

  I had no difficulty getting inside the house. The front door was locked but a ladder left on the grass reached to one of the balconies. The sliding window, secured only by a plastic clip, was easy enough to force.

  There was still enough daylight coming through the window for me to see that the master bedroom had been tidied and cleaned with that rigorous care that is the sign of leave-taking. The huge double bed was stripped of linen and covered with clear plastic covers. Two small carpets were rolled up and sealed into bags that would protect them from termites. Torn up and in the waste-paper basket I found half a dozen Mexico City airport luggage tags dating from some previous journey, and three new and unused airline shoulder-bags not required for the next. The sort of airline bags that come free with airline tickets were not something that the Biedermanns let their servants carry. I stood listening, but the house was completely silent. There was only the sound of the big Pacific Ocean wa
ves battering against the rocks below the house and roaring their displeasure.

  I opened one of the wardrobes. It smelled of moth repellent. There were clothes there: a man’s cream-coloured linen suits, brightly coloured pants and sweaters, handmade shoes – treed and in shoe-bags embroidered ‘P.B.’ – and drawers filled with shirts and underclothes.

  In the other wardrobe, a woman’s dresses, expensive lingerie folded into tissue paper and a multitude of shoes of every type and colour. On the dressing table there was a photo of Mr and Mrs Biedermann in swimsuits standing on a diving board and smiling self-consciously. It had been taken before the car accident.

  The three guest bedrooms on the top floor – each with separate balcony overlooking the ocean and private bathroom – had all been stripped bare. Inside the house, a gallery that gave access to the bedrooms was open on one side to overlook the big lounge downstairs. All the furniture was covered in dustsheets, and to one side of the lounge there was a bucket of dirty water, a trowel, some adhesive and dirty rags marking a place where a large section of flooring was being retiled.

  Only when I got to Biedermann’s study, built to provide a view of the whole coastline, was there any sign of recent occupancy. It was an office; or, more exactly, it was a room furnished with that special sort of luxury furniture that can be tax-deducted as office equipment. There was a big puffy armchair, a drinks cabinet, and a magnificent wood-inlay desk. In the corner was that sort of daybed that Hollywood calls a ‘casting couch’. On it there were blankets roughly folded and a soiled pillow. A big waist-bin contained computer print-out and some copies of the Wall Street Journal. More confidential print-out was now a tangle of paper worms in the clear plastic bag of the shredder. But the notepads were blank, and the expensive desk diary – the flowers of South America, one for every week of the year in full colour, printed in Rio de Janeiro – had never been used. There were no books apart from business reference books and phone and telex directories. Paul Biedermann had never been much of a reader at school but he’d always been good at counting.

  I tried the electric light but it did not work. A house built out here on the edge of nowhere would be dependent upon a generator operating only when the house was occupied. By the time I had searched the house and found no one, the daylight was going fast. The sea had turned the darkest of purples and the western skyline had almost vanished.

  I went back up to the top floor and chose the last guest room along the gallery as a place to spend the night. I found a blanket in the wardrobe and, choosing one of the plasticcovered beds, I covered myself against the cold mist that rolled in off the sea. It soon became too dark to read and, as my interest in the Wall Street Journal waned, I drifted off to sleep, lulled by the sound of the waves.

  It was 2.35 when I was awakened by the car. I saw its lights flashing over the ceiling long before I heard its engine. At first I thought it was just a disturbed dream, but then the bright patch of light flashed across the ceiling again and I heard the diesel engine. It never struck me that it might be Paul Biedermann or any of the family coming home. I knew instinctively that there was danger.

  I slid open the glass door and went outside on to the balcony. The weather had become stormy. Thin ragged clouds raced across the moon, and the wind had risen so that its roar was confused with the sound of the breakers on the rocks below. I watched the car. The headlights were high and close together, a configuration that suggested some Jeep-like vehicle, as did the way it negotiated the bad road. It was still going at speed as it swung round the back to the garage area. The driver had been here before.

  There were two voices; one of the men had a key to the front door. I went through the guest bedroom and crouched on the interior gallery so that I could hear them speaking in the lounge below.

  ‘He’s run away,’ said one voice.

  ‘Perhaps,’ said the other, as if he didn’t care. They were speaking in German. There was no mistaking the Berlin accent of Erich Stinnes, but the other man’s German had a strong Russian accent.

  ‘His car is not here,’ said the first man. ‘What if the Englishmen arrived before us and took him off with them?’

  ‘We would have passed them on the road,’ said Stinnes. He was perfectly calm. I heard the sound of him putting his weight on to the big sofa. ‘That’s better.’ A sigh. ‘Take a drink if you want it. It’s in the cabinet in his study.’

  ‘That stinking jungle road. I could do with a bath.’

  ‘You call that jungle?’ said Stinnes mildly. ‘Wait till you go over to the east coast. Wait until you go across to the training camp where the freedom fighters are trained, and cut your way through some real tropical rain forest with a machete, and spend half the night digging chiggers out of your backside. You’ll find out what a jungle is like.’

  ‘What we came through will do for me,’ said the first man.

  I raised my head over the edge of the gallery until I could see them. They were standing in the moonlight by the tall window. They were wearing dark suits and white shirts and trying to look like Mexican businessmen. Stinnes was about forty years old: my age. He had shaved off the little Leninstyle beard he’d had when I last saw him but there was no mistaking his accent or the hard eyes glittering behind the circular gold-rimmed spectacles.

  The other man was much older, fifty at least. But he was not frail. He had shoulders like a wrestler, cropped head and the restless energy of the athlete. He looked at his watch and then out of the window and then walked over to the place where the tiles were being repaired. He kicked the trowel so that it went skidding across the floor and hit the wall with a loud noise.

  ‘I told you to have a drink,’ said Stinnes. He did not defer to the other man.

  ‘I said you should frighten Biedermann. Well, you’ve frightened him all right. It looks as if you’ve frightened him so much that he’s cleared out of here. That’s not what they wanted you to do.’

  ‘I didn’t frighten him at all,’ said Stinnes calmly. ‘I didn’t take your advice. He’s already too frightened. He needs reassurance. But he’ll surface sooner or later.’

  ‘Sooner or later,’ repeated the elder man. ‘You mean he’ll surface after you’ve gone back to Europe and be someone else’s problem. If it was left to me, I’d make Biedermann a number-one priority. I’d alert every last KGB team in Central America. I’d teach him that an order is an order.’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ said Stinnes. ‘It’s all so easy for you people who sit at desks all your life. But Biedermann is just one small part of a complicated plan…and neither of us knows exactly what the plan is.’

  It was a patronizing reproach, and the elder man’s soft voice did not conceal the anger in him. ‘I say he’s the weak link in the chain, my friend.’

  ‘Perhaps he is supposed to be just that,’ said Stinnes complacently. ‘One day maybe the Englishwoman will put you in charge of one of her crazy schemes, and then you’ll be able to ignore orders and show everyone what a clever man you are in the field. But until that time you’ll do things the way you’re ordered to do them, no matter how stupid it all seems.’ He got to his feet. ‘I’ll have a drink, even if you don’t want one. Biedermann has good brandy.’

  Stinnes passed below me out of sight and I heard him go into the study and pour drinks. When he returned he was carrying two glasses. ‘It will calm you, Pavel. Have patience; it will work out all right. You can’t rush these things. You’ll have to get used to that. It’s not like chasing Moscow dissidents.’ He gave the elder man a glass and they both drank. ‘French brandy. Schnapps and beer are not worth drinking unless they come from a refrigerator.’ He drank. ‘Ah, that’s better. I’ll be glad to be back in Berlin, if only for a brief spell.’

  ‘I was in Berlin in 1953,’ said the elder man. ‘Did you know that?’

  ‘So was I,’ said Stinnes.

  ‘In ‘53? Doing what?’

  Stinnes chuckled. ‘I was only ten years old. My father was a soldier. My mother was in the
army too. We were all kept in the barracks during the disturbances.’

  ‘Then you know nothing. I was in the thick of it. The bricklayers and builders working on those Stalinallee sites started all the trouble. It began as a protest against a ten per cent increase in work norms. They marched on the House of Ministries in Leipzigerstrasse and demanded to see the Party leader, Ulbricht.’ He laughed. It was a low, manly laugh. ‘But it was the poor old Mining Minister who was sent out to face them. I was twenty. I was with the Soviet Control Commission. My chief dressed me up like a German building worker and sent me out to mix with the mob. I was never so frightened in all my life.’

  ‘With your accent you had every cause to be frightened,’ said Stinnes.

  His colleague was not amused. ‘I kept my mouth shut; but I kept my ears open. That night the strikers marched across to the RIAS radio station in West Berlin and wanted their demands to be transmitted over the Western radio. Treacherous German swine.’

  ‘What were their demands?’ asked Stinnes.

  ‘The usual: free and secret elections, cuts in the work norms, no punishment for the trouble-makers.’ The older man drank some more. He was calmer now that he’d had a drink. ‘I advised my people to bring our boys out to clear the streets the way we’d cleared them in 1945. I told them to announce an immediate curfew and give the army shoot-on-sight orders.

  ‘But they didn’t,’ said Stinnes.