Aztec Fire

by Gary Jennings

  “It’s a woman writing and printing pamphlets for Guerrero—probably your amiga. Colonel Madero knows more about her than I do.”

  He stared at me over the rim of his goblet as he sipped brandy.

  “Do you know why I asked you here tonight?”

  “You have a proposition. If I refuse, you’ll signal your man behind the curtain—is it your majordomo?—and the one listening at the keyhole … Raymundo? They will start shooting. Since they are probably poor shots and you are a good one, if it comes down to a fight, I will kill you first … before you are able to pull your pistol from under the table.”

  I had to give Iturbide credit—he didn’t blink. But a small smile told me that I had discovered his plan.

  He shook his head. “It would be a pity to wake up my wife and children with gunfire. And all that blood to clean up. Why don’t we instead come to a mutually satisfying agreement.” He turned in his chair. “Benito, please step out from behind the curtain.”

  His majordomo appeared, musket in hand.

  “You can go to bed. And send Raymundo to his bed, too. I want complete privacy.”

  After the servant left, Iturbide asked, “Do you know what I want?”

  “I can think of three possibilities. I’ve heard you are taking charge of the army fighting Guerrero. You believe I can give you information about his location or strategies. I cannot.”

  “Your second guess?”

  “To enlist me as a spy for you in Guerrero’s camp.”

  “The third?”

  “You want me to kill him?”

  “Will you?”

  “No. I would kill you before I’d kill him.”

  “Of course. But all three guesses—while excellent—are wrong. I have a much simpler task in mind, one that I believe you won’t find offensive. I want you to carry a message to Guerrero.”

  That caught me by surprise. “Write it out. If I run into Guerrero, I’ll hand it to him. But there’s no guarantee I will ever seen him.”

  “This message must go from your lips to Guerrero’s ear only.”

  “What is it?”

  “I want to meet with him. Personally, no intermediaries.”

  “He will think it’s a trap.”

  “Of course. But you must assure him of my honorable intentions. I will also agree to conditions which will guarantee his safety and which will confirm I am not deceiving him.”

  “He will want to know more than just the fact you want to meet with him.”

  “Tell him I want to discuss the future of the colony. It’s that simple. I cannot tell you more.”

  I stood by the fire, my back to him, while I digested the message.

  To suggest that there could be a “future” for the colony other than Spanish domination was inherently treasonous.

  Was Iturbide, perhaps the most influential criollo in the colony, suggesting a future without king and viceroy?

  I turned to face him and he said, “Don’t mistake my intentions, Juan. My blood is Spanish, my home is New Spain, my loyalties are to both. I want only the best for the colony. Things are spiraling out of control in the Old and New Worlds. Undesirables have grabbed power from the king in Madrid and rebellion is exploding everywhere in Spain’s American colonies that will help neither criollos nor peons. We need to manage these changes.”

  I knew peons like me were not included in the “we” Iturbide suggested must manage the changes. And I knew better than to ask him to elaborate on his message. If my interpretation was right, he was already risking everything—his reputation, fortune, his very life.

  “Why me?” I asked. “Why not someone you know and can trust?”

  “Who can you trust in this benighted world? Moreover, I already know you have courage, honor, and resolve. You don’t like criollos, but you are a man who rises above politics to do the honorable thing.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “A few days ago on the Queen’s Bridge you rode into a battle against your own kind to save the life of a criollo. You never thought about what you were doing. You saw me outnumbered and you reacted. Besides, you are a man of conviction and intelligence. You worked secretly for the insurrection for years, playing the loyal peon while cleverly supplying badly needed munitions. Your true loyalty is to the cause of your people. It’s a dangerous mission to carry a message to a rebel leader. Dangerous to the sender and the messenger. I need a man who can accomplish the mission.”

  I gave him a little bow. “I hope, señor, for both of our sakes, that your estimation of my abilities proves true.”

  “The task may be more difficult than you think. You have not been in contact with the rebels for two years. You must also watch your back and your mouth. Half the people you meet in a pulquería claiming to be revolutionaries will be Madero’s agents.” He stopped and grinned. “I’m sure you have some experience in these matters. Leave my house before the first light. I will be on the China Road in a week to assume my new command. My whereabouts will be well known to all because I move with an army. Find Guerrero for me. Then return to me with his reply.”

  “How will I contact you? I can’t ride up to your sentries and ask for you.”

  “Through my servants. I’m taking Benito and Raymundo with me.”

  I had a final question. “Why did you expose me to Madero?”

  “Leave Madero to me. The viceroy’s spy is a very complicated man, who requires complicated handling. For the time being, let me handle him.”

  “That tells me nothing.”

  He threw me a pouch. “Go with God, Juan Rios, and bring me back news that the rebel general wishes to meet.”

  He had one final comment for me as I turned to leave. “We are now even, Juan. I saved your life, you saved mine.”

  Back in the stable, I opened the pouch. The additional ninety reales that Don Carlos had lost betting against me was in it. A reward for finding Guerrero. But it didn’t fail to occur to me that if I was caught by Madero, Iturbide would claim that I had stolen the money and fled.

  An interesting hombre, this criollo. And the way he thought was also intriguing. He said we were “even.” Had he forgotten that he hanged my uncles? That some criollo—perhaps he himself—had executed my mother and sister?

  We were not even. We simply had a stalemate until the next cards were dealt.

  On my way out of the city I stopped at the best inn in the city, a hostel with a reputation for having high stakes card tables. I left a simple message for Luis: Taxco.

  Rich or poor, he would inevitably end up at a card game at the inn after he got to the city.

  PART XXII

  WAR TO THE KNIFE

  HUNDRED FIVE

  THE MINING TOWN of Taxco was a three-day journey from the capital. I made it to the outskirts of town in less than two.

  The city was not under rebel control. A rich town, with much silver, the viceroy fought hard to make sure it remained in royal hands. But the town marked the rural region where the rebels held sway in villages and towns all the way to the Pacific Coast, so the army was better prepared to check strangers than in most towns.

  I needed to circumvent the soldiers’ checkpoints on the main thoroughfares leading into town. Like the ones at Mexico City, they occasionally pulled someone out of the line for close interrogation—either to look busy or because the person piqued their interest. As at the capital, I decided companionship was the best disguise.

  I rode up beside a muleteer bringing in a line of pack animals, and asked him about the safety of roads in the area. Muleteers loved to relate the hardships and hazards of their trade. This one delivered mining supplies to a store on the road that led to the main mines on the other side of town. I asked him if he ever delivered black powder for the mines.

  “No, the store sells it, but to transport it is very dangerous. All the rebels want it, so you can only transport it with a company of soldados, and often a full company is not enough.”

  We entered the town, amblin
g by the soldiers, jabbering like coworkers.

  I was on my own in the town but unsure as to how to proceed. I couldn’t risk roaming the pulquerías, asking for Guerrero and dropping off my old nom de guerre—flaunting my former fame as the “Alchemist” would be suicide.

  Instead of finding Guerrero I’d more likely find a cadre of constables kicking in my door at the inn, after which I’d find the dank, dark confines of an interrogation cell staring me in the face.

  My first priority was finding and protecting Maria. After I was certain Maria was safe, I would focus on delivering Iturbide’s message to Guerrero. As the rebels’ voice in print, she would know how to find the general.

  Rumors concerning the guerrilla leader’s whereabouts changed day to day, but I was confident that he would never be very far from the main road that ran from Acapulco to the capital. Running through jungle and over mountains, that rugged road transported endless shipments of expensive goods flowing in from Manila and mule trains ladened with silver shipments out of Taxco.

  Taxco was in high country, built on the side of a mountain and surrounded by sheer cliffs and mountainsides. Like Guanajuato, it was a tight town, with narrow, cobble-stoned streets that mostly dipped up and down, rather than running horizontally. The central plaza was small, and their cathedral had two soaring bell towers and a dome.

  The muleteer turned out to be a lover of poetry and plays. He told me that a famous writer, Juan Ruiz de Alarcón, was born in the city. A skinny hunchback who lived two hundred years ago. I feigned curiosity, but in truth had no interest in long-dead writers.

  Muleteers considered themselves knights of the roads and knew quite a bit about each other, not only because they traveled the same roads but often competed for the cargoes. I asked my muleteer friend when the next mule team from the royal warehouse in the capital was scheduled to arrive in Taxco. He said he thought it was scheduled to leave three days after he did, but he wasn’t sure.

  His uncertainty wasn’t good enough, so I had to visit the store that the printer’s ink was being shipped to. Asking questions in it would be risky. An Aztec asking questions about the printer’s supplies would raise suspicions, not to mention that spies looking for the rebel pamphleteer no doubt abounded. Still, I did not see that I had any other option.

  I located the store and was about to enter when I spotted a ghost—Gomez, the bastardo who betrayed Maria at Chapala.

  Ayyo … I’d killed Gomez at Chapala.

  Apparently, however, I didn’t kill him thoroughly enough.

  Madero’s spy was back—no doubt after Maria.

  And her ink.

  I leaned against a wall, a three-day beard and my hat pulled down to block the sun and my face … a cigarillo dangling, hoping to melt into the other slackers hanging out in front of the store.

  I got a look at his face as he strolled by with a puta. Jesús Cristo! He had a third eye—the round scar where I’d shot him between the eyes.

  Too intent on impressing the puta, he didn’t see me, but he waved to two men sitting on the curb in front of a barbershop across the street. They yelled greetings back.

  Good. Now I knew what three of Madero’s spies looked like … and that the ink had not arrived.

  I also knew that Maria would be in for extremely rough treatment when they grabbed her. Gomez would not waste time in taking his revenge. His dirty shirt and trousers were unkempt, his straw hat filthy and frayed, his face lined and drawn, his eyes hollow and haggard. He was clearly wasting away from drink, debauchery, and no doubt the dreaded diseases picked up from putas.

  Nor was I engaging in idle speculation. He’d just come out of a pulquería where peons drink cheap Aztec beer instead of Spanish beers and wine. And he had acquired a cheap whore.

  He didn’t look like a man Madero would be able to trust with an important assignment. Madero had probably sent him on the assignment because he could identify Maria. No doubt after scraping Gomez out of the gutter for the job.

  The humiliation—and punishment from Madero—for failing to arrest Maria and me would have been severe. The stares, which his middle eye inevitably provoked, would be a continual reminder that he was a traitor to his own people and of his failed career as a double agent.

  He would remember Maria and me as the two nemeses who brought him down.

  Moreover, Madero might have sent other men—not just three. He might also have enlisted soldiers and constables as backup.

  I had to keep an eye on the store to identify more of them. Going into the store and asking about ink shipments was impossible, however. With few printing presses in the area, there could not be more than a few shipments of the special ink, so my question would result in shouts for the constables.

  If the muleteer was correct about the shipment not being due for several days, at least I’d have some time to prepare.

  Killing Gomez rated high on my agenda. He could identify me as I hung around the streets. And he might harm Maria the moment he saw her.

  It was almost six o’clock. The store would stay open another hour. Watching the two men at the barbershop, I realized their lax attitudes were not faked. Therefore, the ink had not arrived. Gomez wouldn’t be bedding a whore if there was a chance the ink purchaser was showing up at the store.

  Ayyo … once again in my life, I needed a plan. A couple of them. Killing Gomez would get rid of one snake—but I would face a whole nest of them after him. Standing out in the middle of the town square with a pistola in each hand was going to bring nothing but a quick death for Maria and me. I needed something that would give me the fighting power of a dozen men. Something I knew better than I knew women.

  The muleteer had told me of a store on the road to the mines that sold just what I needed.

  HUNDRED SIX

  BEFORE I LEFT town, I bought sugar, metal pots, and buckets at a store. No, I wasn’t planning to bake a cake but I would be mixing up batches. Then I went to the mining store and bought mercury canisters, black powder, saltpeter, and fuses. On the way back to town, I started looking for a place to house my workshop. I spotted it off the road that led back into town—a poorly kept house with an outlying building that was little more than a three-sided lean-to. The open side of the outer building faced away from the road. A donkey cart stood next to a corral that held a melancholy burro. I needed some of the animal’s hay, too.

  I wasn’t a lover of burros. A mule was the offspring of a jack donkey and a female horse, but the similarities ended there. Mules lived up to their reputation of being stubborn, but they were smart, lived off the land, and were the workhorses of the colony. But burros were erratic. The bastardos would lick the hand that fed them one moment … and kick their benefactor in the cojones the next.

  Nonetheless, the beast would play a small role in my plan—so long as I did not have to wrestle a burro along with a gang of Madero’s killers.

  The woman of the house was a mestiza widow—barely twenty years old. With long black hair braided down her back, the straight nose of a Spaniard and wide flaring cheekbones of an Aztec, she was unusually attractive.

  “Yes, señor, I have no man. I have not had a man for two years. He died in the mines, leaving me only this small abode. I am alone in this humble home. Of course, if you are sure you need privacy, I can stay with my sister and her family.”

  When I assured her I did need privacy, she stared at me with disappointed doe-sad eyes, her manner subtly seductive.

  Still, she was happy to accept my money and to rent me the lean-to, the cart, and the burro. I paid her for a week but intended to be gone much sooner.

  I prepared two types of bombs, starting with a smoke one. Black powder smoked, but not enough. Adding sugar and a little sawdust I found at the wood pile, I made saltpeter burn slower and dirtier, creating a much heavier whitish haze. I had to play with the mixture before it erupted into thick clouds of dense, billowing impenetrable smoke.

  I also needed something with a bigger bang and sharper bite
than a smoke bomb. Adding saltpeter to the blasting powder, I made it burn faster and hotter. When the powder was tightly confined, it would detonate on ignition … which is where the mercury canisters came in. They made excellent bomb casings.

  The king had a monopoly on mercury—a substance that was critical to the separation of silver from those baser elements in the ore and that came packed in metal canisters. Consequently, mercury canisters were available in abundance.

  It would not be the first time the canister bombs were used in a colonial battle: In 1810, Father Hidalgo’s army of “Aztecs” attacked the fortresslike granary in the silver mining town of Guanajuato. During the siege, the Spanish defenders threw mercury canisters filled with gunpowder and triggered by short fuses down on the indio attackers.

  I planned on putting them to even more effective use.

  HUNDRED SEVEN

  I SPENT TWO days making compounds and occasionally checking out Gomez, his companions, and the store. I was consequently near the store when a carriage carrying a wealthy Spanish general famous for his military exploits arrived in town.

  General Luis Benito Juarez de Santa Barbara de la Sierra Madre gave me a sweeping greeting with his wide-brimmed hat. “You—Aztec guttersnipe!” he thundered at me, his face split in two by a wickedly scintillating smile. “I’m in need of an ignorant indio carriage driver.”

  His driver had fled into a pulquería as soon as the carriage pulled up. The man looked like gallows-bait the “general” had commandeered off a prison ship.

  “Where did you get the carriage?”

  The question was, of course, rhetorical. I knew where Luis had gotten the carriage—the same place he had acquired the general’s rank … the same place he got all of his other titles.

  “I won the carriage in a game of chance.”

  “You actually won for once?”

  “I meant a different kind of gambling. My opponent thought he could defeat me on the field of honor—pistola to pistola … after he had accused me of cheating at cards. A ridiculous charge. I had only marked half the deck.”