by Robert Moss
“I don’t know.” Maitland had a crawling sensation at the back of his neck. Johnny’s instinct could be right. The vital element might still be missing.
“Where is the president?” he said suddenly.
“I believe he went to the theatre. It’s Toscanini tonight. Did you know Toscanini once conducted at the Teatro Municipal? The president has a special fondness for his work. The performance must be ending about now. You know, the president is concerned to give the impression that everything is exactly as normal. He has been quite impeccable in that.”
“I’m delighted to hear it. And after the theatre?”
“He’ll go home to bed. He’s not a man for late-night parties.”
“Who’s guarding the palace?”
“The marines, of course. I think he likes their white uniforms. But they’re good men. The best the military have.”
“And they belong to the navy, as in England.”
“Naturally.”
“And that means that Admiral Cavalcanti gives them their orders.”
“Well, the marines have their own commander.”
“But the chief of naval operations is his superior, isn’t he?”
“Look here, Harry. I’m not an authority on matters of navy protocol. Why don’t you go and ask the admiral himself?”
Maitland frowned.
“Is there something you’re driving at?” Colonel Plinio asked him.
“I just can’t seem to put my finger on it. You remember I told you about one of Prestes’ men, the one the others call Boy Scout?”
“I do.”
“Were you able to find out anything more about him?”
“Your description would have fitted a hundred young men who have burned out half their brain cells on alcohol or ideology. Thank you.” He took a glass of champagne from a waiter. “Does he matter so much?”
“I keep thinking about his threat.”
“Not very specific, was it?”
“Listen, it had to do with the president. That may be what we’ve missed.”
“You mean an assassination attempt?”
“Yes.”
Plinio allowed himself a gentle smile.
“I don’t see that the idea is particularly funny.”
“Forgive me,” the Colonel said. “You live among us, but you don’t think like us. I know my Brazilians. Carlos Prestes may be a Communist, he may be ready to lie down and lick the dirt off Stalin’s toecaps, but he would never authorize the murder of Getulio Vargas. He’s a Brazilian, and a Brazilian of a certain class. Within that class we’re not given to killing each other. This may, I admit, be a serious political defect. But it’s not un-English, is it? Assassination is for Spaniards and Russians. And possibly Germans,” he added, glancing at Honorio Schmidt, who had been joined by Trott, the Gestapo representative. “People who burn with the absolute. Besides, the Communists know that if they killed the president, the whole country would unite to mourn him and bury them.”
“The leaders of the revolt aren’t Brazilians,” Harry said quietly. “They’re countrymen of Herr Trott.”
Plinio tweaked his moustache. “Hmmm. Well, we’ll find out soon enough, I suppose. I may drop by the palace and check that Xuxu’s tucked up properly for the night. I expect that, like the rest of us, he won’t want to miss a thing.”
Harry found it odd that the chief of the secret police referred to his president by the same pejorative nickname — Xuxu — as the Communists Johnny was dealing with.
Colonel Plinio put his cap on his head, clicked his heels and gave a comical salute.
“By the way,” he said, as an apparent afterthought, “are you coming to see the fireworks?”
“I wouldn’t miss them for the world.”
5
The beach was a narrow strip of sand in the cleft between the Sugarloaf and a rocky promontory that struck out into the ocean like a giant paw. The sand, now white under a crescent moon, was pink in the afternoons in the light reflected from the sheer, polished slopes above the royal palms, so they called the place Praia Vermelha, the Red Beach. To Prestes’ supporters in the Third Regiment, whose barracks faced the sea, the name seemed auspicious.
Chief among them was a high-strung, voluble captain from the south. He had a knack for holding an audience, even though he delivered his lectures in a monotonous, rather tinny voice and his stature was less than heroic. With his small, squat body, his tiny head and jutting beak of a nose, he strongly resembled the macuco bird, and the nickname Macuco had stuck to him. His influence over the soldiers was the more surprising because he did not belong to the regiment. On the contrary. He had been sent to Praia Vermelha under guard, sentenced to twenty days’ detention for spreading sedition among the garrisons of the south. The Fascists had tried to shoot him in Porto Alegre after the court-martial, so his family had prevailed on the General Staff to let him serve out his sentence in the capital.
The regiment treated him with the respect owed to an officer and a gentleman. He dined in the mess. He was allowed to take up residence in a family apartment in Copacabana and to come and go from the barracks as he pleased. He soon made contact with the handful of Communists and the larger amorphous group of Prestes admirers in the barracks. He arranged to circulate Communist broadsheets especially aimed at the sergeants and corporals whose terms of service were about to expire and at the ill-equipped conscripts who were crowded into ramshackle wood-and-stucco pavilions put up for the famous Exposition of 1908 and never expected to last. He singled out the men with the stomach for a fight and schooled them, in one-on-one meetings, in the techniques of insurrection.
Fewer than a dozen men out of the seventeen hundred in the regiment had any exact notion of what was being planned. Fewer than four dozen, despite Macuco’s efforts, could be counted on to give instant support to an armed rising. But the little captain from the south was not intimidated by the odds against the conspirators. He was a student of Lenin and Mussolini. His bible was a well-thumbed volume of Curzio Malaparte’s essay on the coup d’etat, which he had read aloud to some of his recruits. He was convinced that revolutions, of whatever hue, had nothing to do with the masses; the ones that succeeded were the work of a small and dedicated elite advancing to power over a bovine majority that lacked the imagination and the will either to join or to resist. In this vision of things Macuco found a soul mate in Nilo.
While Harry Maitland took the air on the mayor’s patio, Macuco was on his way back to the regiment on a bicycle after attending a secret meeting near his flat in Copacabana. In his pocket he carried the letter Nilo had pressed into his hands. He was so elated by its contents that he whistled as he pedalled along. The letter, signed with the magical name of Prestes, appointed Macuco to the command of the Third Regiment of the People’s Revolutionary Army. His new commission would take effect at 2:00 A.M., when he was charged with seizing the barracks. At 3:00 A.M., he was to lead an assault on police headquarters and the presidential palace.
The Urca casino, across the avenue from the barracks, was ablaze with lights. The place was a Venus fly-trap for off-duty officers who preferred philandering to politics. Macuco’s grin broadened as he saw it looming up. If he had his way, some of his brother officers would see more of the casino than they had contemplated tonight.
As he jumped off his bicycle, he noticed that there were a lot more sentries about than usual. A whole platoon with machine guns was deployed along the street side of the barracks.
Macuco started walking his bike through the line, and a fresh-faced conscript trotted up with his rifle at the ready. “Halt!”
“Boa noite, calouro,” Macuco said casually. “Hello there, greenhorn. Don’t you know me?”
“Password!”
“Password? We don’t bother with passwords! What do you think this is, a boys’ club?”
He heard the rattle of the rifle bolt and began to feel distinctly unhappy. The kid was nervous and green enough to let that thing in his hands go off.
It might just be a training exercise, he thought. But if there were an alert and they searched him and found the letter—
His only recourse was to brazen it out.
“Where’s your officer?” he demanded. “I’m carrying special orders.”
He took out the compromising envelope and waved it in the boy’s face. The soldier looked confused but did not give way.
Macuco saw the duty officer striding briskly across the patio. He was delighted to recognize Lieutenant Otelo, his closest friend in the regiment. Apart from Macuco, there were only two commissioned officers in the regiment who belonged to the party; this lieutenant was one of them.
“Tudo bem,” the lieutenant said to his jittery sentry. “The captain is expected.”
“What’s going on?” Macuco whispered to him as they walked towards the barracks.
“They’ve ordered a general alert.”
“And put you in charge of the guard? That’s a bit of luck.”
“Not just luck. The colonel picked Avelino for duty officer. But he started bitching that he had a date, so I offered to swap places with him.”
“They locked up the arms, I suppose?”
“That’s the bad news. Juliao’s in charge of the arsenal. He’ll fight us.”
“Only if he gets the chance.” Macuco grinned. “I’ll take care of him myself.”
“So we’re going to do it?” The subaltern’s face was shiny with excitement.
Macuco showed him the letter. “Go to David and Alvaro,” he ordered in an undertone. “Tell them to spread the word. I’ll go to the others.”
When Macuco came out of the barracks, it was almost 1:00 A.M., a clear, bright night. Everything was black and white — the sentries, the revellers coming and going from their cars to the casino across the way as distinct as in a movie. But Macuco did not spot the colonel until he loomed up from somewhere among the palms, in uniform, with his service revolver at his belt.
“It’s a bit late for you, isn’t it, Captain?” Colonel Ferreira challenged him. “Don’t you have better things to do this time of night?”
“I don’t sleep so well, sir.”
“What are you doing here?”
“The same as you.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Well, there are plenty of rumours floating around. I thought I’d see if any of them are true.”
“You’d do better to get a good night’s sleep.” Colonel Ferreira’s tone was not unkindly; it was almost avuncular.
Macuco mimicked it to perfection. “At your time of life, you’re the one who ought to worry about getting your rest.”
“Damned impertinence!” the colonel erupted. “Go to your lodgings before I forget you’re a guest and have you locked up.”
“I’m afraid you’re in no position to give that order.”
“Lieutenant!” Ferreira called.
Otelo hurried over to them.
“This officer is to be placed in solitary confinement.” The lieutenant swallowed and looked at Macuco.
“I am assuming command,” Macuco said coolly. “Colonel Ferreira will be our guest tonight.”
The revolution in Rio was starting nearly an hour ahead of schedule because of a social indiscretion. So much the better, Macuco told himself. Even if there had been a leak, they would have plenty of time to secure Red Beach before the other side was ready for them.
6
Harry Maitland lingered at the mayor’s party long after Colonel Plinio left. At Doctor Alcibiades’ villa, nobody took account of the clock. It was nothing unusual for his entertainments to last until dawn. One of the guests was playing “Lili Marlene” on the baby grand. Harry was surprised to see that the pianist was Courtland Bull. He played more delicately than Stella Mackenzie sang. She swayed over towards Harry, moaning the chorus in a tone that reminded Harry of a dog trying to move on an injured leg. He caught her arm before she had sloshed more than an inch of gin and tonic over his white dinner jacket.
“Kiss me, Harry,” Stella said, puckering her lips and throwing herself backwards in a parody of Hollywood passion so that he had to fling his arms around her to save her from falling.
He got her upright, gave her a chaste peck on the corner of the mouth and beat a hasty retreat.
Harry noticed that Admiral Cavalcanti had disappeared. So had several of the army officers and the German attaché, Wolfgang Trott. Then Captain Schmidt came marching briskly through the salon, sidestepping the dancers. Instead of going out into the front hall, Schmidt veered right and disappeared down a corridor that led to the library and the private wing. Harry presumed the policeman had gone in search of a lavatory or a telephone. But Schmidt had not returned when, several minutes later, a man who looked more like a bodyguard than a servant came out of the same hallway, crossed the salon, and whispered something to Courtland Bull that caused the American to cease his piano playing. Bull kissed the hands of his claque of lady admirers and followed the messenger back the way he had come. Harry got a better look at the servant this time and thought he had seen him in the background the night Alcibiades had shown off his snake house. The servant was a real charmer: flat-faced, swarthy skin, woolly eyebrows that met in the middle and resembled a hairy caterpillar crawling across his low forehead.
It looked as if Alcibiades had summoned the oil millionaire to a meeting somewhere in the private wing. The mayor had made only a couple of fleeting appearances in the course of the entire evening, interrupting the merrymaking at one point to deliver a brief word in praise of the immense philanthropic efforts of the Bull Foundation and of Mr. Courtland Bull personally. These had allegedly brought new hope to the poor of Rio de Janeiro.
Harry was still puzzled by the connection between Doctor Alcibiades and the oil baron. He had little doubt that Courtland Bull had returned to Rio in high hopes of making a financial killing. He had done his homework with some help from Desmond Wild and an American press cuttings service and knew that Bull was not renowned in his home state of Texas for either philanthropy or progressive leanings. At an oilmen’s gathering in Houston, he had publicly berated President Roosevelt for his “good neighbour” policy in South America, which ruled out the use of military force. In Bull’s opinion, the Roosevelt approach was a license for “communism and the theft of U.S. property” all over the continent. Yet the Bull Foundation was making generous donations to Doctor Alcibiades’ community clinics. The obvious explanation was that Courtland Bull saw the mayor as a coming man in Brazil and wanted to get him in his debt — so deeply in his debt that, if he got greater power, he would have no option but to hand over whatever concessions the Texan demanded. Desmond Wild had heard stories that Bull was mixed up with a consortium that was trying to sell the Brazilian navy some fancy new destroyers and minesweepers. That might explain what Admiral Cavalcanti was doing at the party. South of the Rio Grande — and north of it, too — money tended to talk louder than ideology.
Yet Harry could not satisfy himself with this simple line of reasoning. He felt instinctively that something much deeper and more dangerous was involved. Whatever was taking place in Alcibiades’ private rooms must be bound up with the conspiracy that was unfolding in the rest of the city. Was Courtland Bull aware of the Communist plot? Had the mayor invited his strange collection of Nazis and right-wing admirals and generals in order to immobilize them — or to use them in some way?
It was past 1:00 A.M., Harry saw, and he sensed that it was now urgent to have the answers to these questions. He set off down the corridor in the footsteps of Courtland Bull. The hallway ended abruptly in another that led off both to right and left. There was an old German woodcut on the wall. It showed St. Denis, the patron saint of the French and of syphilitics, receiving the supplication of pockmarked reprobates. A memento of Alcibiades’ former life.
Maitland hesitated. The library was off to the left, he remembered. The door was slightly ajar, and there was a light on within. He edged towards it.
“The Senhor w
ishes something?”
He wheeled round at the sound of the gruff voice and found Caterpillar behind him.
“I thought I might use the telephone,” Harry said.
“The senhor will find a telephone in the main lobby.”
“Perhaps I might see Doctor Alcibiades,” Harry changed tack.
“The Doctor is not available.”
There was no chance of talking his way round this brute, Harry concluded. He would have to backtrack and start again.
He was moving back along the corridor with Caterpillar shadowing his every step when he heard an inhuman wail.
It seemed to be coming from the other direction, from the end of the hall that led out into the back garden and the reptile house.
The wail turned into a low groan, punctuated by a few human syllables.
Maitland slipped by the guard and hurried towards the source of these sounds. Caterpillar was behind him but made no further move to block him until he got out the side door on to the verandah.
The groans were more distinct now. Maitland fancied that he heard a few words in English, even his own name being called.
“The Senhor must go back inside the house,” Caterpillar announced, interposing his bulk on the path that led to the snake house.
“Somebody’s been hurt,” Maitland protested. “We must go and see.”
Caterpillar drew a knife. The moonlight danced along the blade. He signalled for Harry to go back inside.
Instead, Harry struck out with his right foot. He had calculated the distance nicely. The toe of his patent leather shoe clipped the servant’s humorous. He squealed, and the knife tumbled from his hand; his lower arm flopped down uselessly, as if the limb had snapped at the elbow. But he looked as if he might still have some fight in him, so Harry delivered another kick to his groin that laid him out on his back.
