Thing to Love

by Geoffrey Household

“A letter, yes,” said Concha doubtfully, and then added with sudden decision: “But of course a letter will be enough — a confidential letter telling him it has all been arranged. And it will have been — through the police and the civil governors, not the Cabinet. How well do you know MacKinlay?”

  “Very well. For Miro’s sake I had to. I have even attended what he calls a press conference because he begged me to. Their eyes were disgusting.”

  “Did you think they were interested in your intelligence, my girl? Don’t come to me with such baby talk! Can you persuade MacKinlay to trust me?”

  “I can try. And he is not a person to think that the man who signs the banknotes runs the bank.”

  “That is more like your father,” said Concha approvingly, “whose eyes also — Well, to be fair, I should never describe them as disgusting. A somewhat too intimate curiosity, but profoundly courteous. It is really unnecessary to be so distant with him, Feli. The police will arrest neither of you if you talk to him.”

  “I cannot forgive him.”

  “There are a lot of people whom I cannot forgive until I am exasperated to find that I have.”

  “If it was not that he loves Miro . . .”

  “He has to have something to love.”

  “No doubt he will find it in the usual way. What do you want me to tell MacKinlay?”

  “That if his C.I.A. fly the air crews into San Vicente at once by commercial airliner, they will be transported to Lérida by coach straight from the runway without passing through any controls. Once there, they come under Miro’s command.”

  “Won’t they need ground staff?”

  “I shall have it recruited from the Air Force prisoners. Enough of them will accept an offer of double pay. They are all demoralized since Miro bumped Ledesma off.”

  “Concha!”

  “A manner of speaking, Feli. No, he would have treated him like Jesús-María and given him a key to the Citadel cellars. But I am not the only one who would rather see flowers on Ledesma’s grave than on his dinner table.”

  “I cannot very well ask Don Andrés to the flat or visit his hotel for a long private interview.”

  “The United States Embassy will ask me to cocktails or lunch with you in attendance. Arrange the invitation and see that your MacKinlay is there. My secretary will give you my appointments book. I will cancel any of them for this.”

  “How much does the Embassy know?”

  “Daughter mine, that is MacKinlay’s business, not ours!” Concha exclaimed. “He can tell them what he likes so long as he stops that old fool of an ambassador running up the Stars and Stripes and making a speech of welcome.”

  “Where do they get them from? Their career diplomats are very good.”

  “This one came from the rubber goods industry, my dear. As I told Gregorio, at least it was some guarantee of tact. The alternative they offered us was a lumberman.”

  Felicia, her thoughts obsessed by the continual vision of tiny vehicles too far scattered over the distances of the llanos, acted with speed and decision that were a conscious imitation of her husband. She called at the Embassy, where she was always welcome as an informal and decorative visitor, and persuaded the Ambassadress that the Presidenta was lonely in the absence of Don Gregorio. She gave it all a touching flavor of neighbors in the old home town, and the Ambassadress, though flustered and surprised — she made it plain that she had been somewhat shocked by Doña Concha’s incisive conversation and felt her own response inadequate— was flattered into an invitation to the quietest possible lunch the following day.

  Andrew MacKinlay was warned and was there, giving his normal modest performance as the distinguished newspaper correspondent easily carrying the culture of New England into the rough-and-tumble of the marketplace. It was a simple and cordial lunch. Felicia assumed that there must have been agitated questioning in private of the Presidenta’s real motives. But perhaps not. They seemed to have settled for a point of view which had never occurred to her. Husband in New York — what more natural than that the devoted wife should seek and accept an invitation from the Embassy? Her reason could be sentimentality, or that she wished to communicate with him without passing the message through the President’s Office for coding. All ridiculous, when one knew the relationship between Concha and her husband, but plausible when one did not. She herself, if Miro had been in New York, would have felt exaggeratedly warm to all North Americans.

  Concha was behaving herself with most endearing simplicity — a warhorse giving rides to children and enjoying it. That old fool, she had called her host; but one had to admit he was an excellent host with a kindly wisdom which wasn’t exactly wit but had a pleasant dryness of flavor. So long as there was a competent, professional team to do the work, it might not be bad policy to select an Ambassador who would be content to impress on Latin-Americans the simple good will typical of his people.

  Felicia herself was impatient and annoyingly aware of feeling brittle and sharp, like a daughter of the Incas in an Old People’s Home. The slow and easy chatter of Don Gregorio’s stay in New York, of the history of the Palace, of the coffee-marketing scheme went on and on. She was thankful when Concha, with regal ease, played protocol and dismissed her temporary lady-in-waiting to entertain herself with the only other nonofficial guest while the diplomats gathered round Concha in the drawing room.

  “Did you see any damage at Hermosillo?” Felicia asked.

  “None whatever,” MacKinley answered, “except a burned-out tank by the railroad line. Trains and convoys were running normally. What nobody understands, Doña Felicia, is the brilliance of your husband’s campaign. It looks as if he were all spread out like a snake in the sun; only at the far end can you see the tongue continually flickering. And God help anything it touches, for the fangs are only just behind and faster still!”

  “If only the fangs could be directed from the air!”

  “I hear that we should like to do a lot more for your husband than we can.”

  “How well do you know Concha Vidal?”

  “Hardly at all. I like her looks and they say she has a more decisive character than the President. But if she has any political influence she hides it very well.”

  “My husband trusts her absolutely.”

  It wasn’t true. Concha had carefully kept out of the affairs of the Citadel and Fifth Division, except for her one warning of the probable defection of the Air Force. But at least it was true that Miro had learned to have respect for her judgment.

  “I admire your husband’s taste in everything.”

  She smiled her acknowledgment.

  “If there is anything you need in the absence of the President you can always go and see her.”

  “I’ll remember that, Doña Felicia. Up to the present I have had every facility. All of you have put out the red carpet for me whenever I wanted a story.”

  “Don Andrés, perhaps I should not know whom you really represent, but I do. Concha Vidal can give you immediate action in more than news stories.”

  “And discretion?” he asked drily.

  “That stands to reason. You said just now that you did not know how much political influence she had.”

  “Well, that’s a fair example, Doña Felicia. Shall we stop playing this one with the cards so close to the chest? Without mentioning what I think you are talking about, can she do it? And, if she can, does she realize that we must be able to deny the whole thing and to keep on denying it until the men have done their job and can be quietly withdrawn?”

  “Yes and yes.”

  “You are sure?”

  “Quite sure. Nothing will go through the Cabinet. It would be treated as a Secret Service matter, with nothing but verbal instructions to the police and the civil governors concerned.”

  “Who would give those instructions?”

  “I don’t know, Don Andrés. Doña Concha never gives an order, but it is surprising how she is always obeyed.”

  “Suppose someone teleph
oned or cabled Don Gregorio for confirmation?”

  “It won’t be done at a high enough level for that. It’s just a question of orders to San Vicente airport and police. Such people do not telephone the President.”

  “The general himself might. However much he wants the help we can give, he is not a man to pull a fast one on his government.”

  “It would never occur to him that there was anything to question. In any case you have the President’s signed agreement.”

  He made no comment on that, evidently unwilling to commit himself to approval or disapproval of her inside information.

  “When can I see Doña Concha?”

  “There is nothing to prevent you calling at the Palace. You have been there often enough. Before we leave I will let you know when.”

  “Doña Felicia,” he said, “you know this country very well all the way from the Ateneo to the Indians.”

  There was a change in his manner, recalling the hardly perceptible difference between Miro’s voice in the mess and in his office. She knew that the decision had been taken and that she had in a way come under his command.

  “I have always been glad to do anything I could.”

  “Not information this time. I want advice. The air crews we send will all speak Spanish, though I don’t want them to open their mouths unless they have to until they reach Lérida. There they will be cut off from the world. I’ll trust the general to tie up that airport so that even a mouse can’t get into it without a pass.

  “Our chief trouble will be our own newspaper correspondents. I can handle them for two or three weeks. They will all be in and around Hermosillo, and they will never see a plane at all. When they have to be told something at last, I shall appeal to patriotism. That will be good for three or four days more. But during all this time — it might with luck be enough for the general to track down Avellana’s Commandos and wipe them out — the country is bound to be flooded by rumors. Avellana cannot know who is flying the aircraft unless he has the luck to bring one down, but he is going to fill the air with protests and accusations. Now, what are we to say in reply?”

  “Enough of our own pilots have come over to Vidal.”

  “Well, it would be difficult to disprove. But in that case you would give their names with all possible publicity. You wouldn’t shut them up on Lérida Airfield.”

  “Right-wing exiles from all over Latin America who can fly and have been involved in revolutions.”

  “That would be helpful — and we might throw in some Poles, Czechs and Hungarians for good measure. But I have had experience of this sort of thing, Doña Felicia. However closely we guard the air crews and the ground staff, Lérida is going to know the truth.”

  “It will be only a rumor, and you should hear some of the absurdities which are being whispered already! Just as many start in the Ateneo as in the Barracas. We shall start counter-rumors. Anything will be believed for a couple of days. The direct intervention of archangels, if you like. No, don’t laugh! It would go down quite well in some of the remoter nunneries.”

  “And may I use you for communication with Doña Concha? I shall have to keep away from the Palace once the move is arranged.”

  “Of course. Guayanas only asks speed from you, Don Andrés. Help my husband to finish with this horrible business once and for all.”

  CHAPTER XVIII

  [February 17–27]

  IN THE ABSENCE OF HER HUSBAND Felicia was generally up and about long before her cook, Elena, returned from market; but the previous evening had been long and exhausting. She had been acting as interpreter between Concha, who spoke little English, and two mysterious North Americans. After that she had telephoned to Miro, who was at Lérida with Don Andrés, and passed on an urgent message about “our friends” — deliberately obscure, since they were talking over the open land lines, and sandwiched between such cold endearments as she could manage when two complete strangers were leaning on the desk.

  The whole move had gone efficiently and secretly. In another week the sorties from Lérida, commanding and invulnerable as horsemen rounding up the herds, would begin to sweep the llanos reporting every concentration of the Avellanistas and marking them down for envelopment and destruction.

  Concha had described to her the arrival of the air crews. The big airliner had screamed in at dusk and stopped at the far end of the airport, where the whispering grass closed upon the tarmac. Within five minutes the passengers and their baggage had entered three motor coaches driven by picked men of the security police and were on their way to Lérida. There was nothing about the coaches themselves to attract attention except that the window slats which shaded the seats from sun were down at night.

  Even San Vicente flight control was not in the secret. The airliner reported itself as empty, on the way to Brazil for sale, and coming in to refuel. And empty it was by the time it had taxied back to the airport. An hour later it continued its flight on course until it had passed far beyond the control zone of Guayanas and could turn for home.

  As yet there had been no very definite reactions from the town of Lérida. Agents mixing with the people reported that they were busily making their own rumors. Since ground crews from the Air Force had been seen to enter the airfield for duty, it was assumed that pilots too had passed over to Vidal. If the government did not announce the fact in triumph but chose to keep it secret, it was in order to surprise the Avellanistas. Don Andrés considered that this story, with variations, might be kept going for a while even after operations had begun.

  Best news of all was that Gregorio Vidal had quietly accepted the accomplished fact. There was nothing else he could do. When informed that the air crews were safely and discreetly at Lérida — for Don Andrés and his organization had insisted that then at least he must be told — he had not appeared at all resentful. So far as could be judged from his long-distance personality at the end of a wire, he assumed that Concha and Miro had forced his hand.

  Concha herself had begun to wonder whether he had not expected it, whether in fact his sudden departure for New York had not been a calculated avoidance of responsibility rather than panic. It could be, she told Felicia, that she had underrated the cunning of the Managerial Society. Direct evidence was untraceable, but she strongly suspected that Gregorio had left instructions that if Miro gave the order to admit the North American air crews, it was to be obeyed. There seemed to be a trail laid pointing directly at Miro.

  As Felicia had foreseen, Miro never questioned the authority for this secret intervention, assuming that one reason, probably the main reason, for Don Gregorio’s absence was to arrange the details on the spot. She had not the slightest feeling of guilt in leaving it at that. He knew, as always, the one military essential which he needed, and she had got it for him — a small tactical Air Force which at last could ease for the Division its intractable task of both scattering widely enough to preserve some sort of contact with the enemy and of being present in sufficient force to hold him until he could be pinned down and destroyed. According to Don Andrés, Miro had at once and typically concentrated not on the problems of the campaign, but on providing for the North American air crews every possible comfort in their internment and on charming their commander, with whom he appeared to have established an enthusiastic mutual admiration society.

  Still in bed, she heard Elena enter the flat and lay down her heavy basket inside the door instead of going straight to the kitchen and unpacking her purchases with a wail of song. The cook knocked and came in, bursting straight into her story upon a note of indignation.

  “There was a fellow in the market who asked me to give this at once into the hands of your ladyship. When I turned my back upon him he said that it was something political, and that if he wished your ladyship to know what he had the honor to think of her appearance he would shout it in the street instead of stopping a pretty maid and passing a letter like some bastard in a comic opera. Your ladyship will excuse the language which was his not mine, althoug
h for the rest his approach appeared most courteous. Also he said that he would be there when the market closes to receive your ladyship’s reply.”

  Felicia took the cheap envelope, unaddressed but, considering its origin, surprisingly clean.

  “All right, Elena. Thank you. You said nothing to the police at the door?”

  “And what would I say to them, my mistress? They have nothing to do but get in the way of honest folk. There is not a soul who would harm your ladyship.”

  When Elena had gone Felicia opened the envelope with a faint sense of unease, expecting abuse or obscenity although the solid approach of the stranger in the market seemed to preclude both.

  If you drive down the coast on the Cumana road you will find by the wayside a person to whom you and your distinguished husband last said good-by late at night outside a village of peons. You will agree that to avoid misunderstandings it should not be known that we have met.

  The young fellow who will deliver this note can neither read nor write but is a person of confidence. You have only to tell him no, or yes and the time. I give you my word that I shall be alone. Yours I do not need, since all Guayanas knows that the most respected lady is as discreet as she is fearless.

  Morote’s spelling was still eccentric with an old-fashioned tendency to muddle b’s and v’s, but the writing, sure to be his own in a matter of such delicacy, flowed from coarse fingers as firmly as his music, though plainly a slow and obstinate reproduction of the copperplate he had learned as a child.

  It seemed early to receive a feeler for peace, but if this was one, it was traveling in the right direction. Morote to Juan would have been more natural. They did not, however, understand each other at all. So Morote to Miro, via herself, was a fair substitute.

  She sent a message back by Elena that she would leave San Vicente at four o’clock and not in the white car. It was the hottest part of the day but also the quietest.

  Quiet indeed it was as she jolted over the lines and cobbles of the tram terminus where Miro had received the accolade of the fly-blown stalls. The only visible inhabitants were half asleep in the shade, observing her even less than a fat iguana which clung to the top of a red-hot rail warming its cold belly into activity. She drove slowly along the sea in a borrowed car and at last saw Morote in her mirror suddenly appearing from behind a cactus gray with dust. She waited. He got quickly into the back of the car without a word.