MAMista

by Len Deighton

  ‘Yes,’ Lucas answered.

  ‘An officer?’

  ‘A colonel.’

  There was the raw essence of elitism. She had heard wild rumours that a man – an emissary from the highest quarters in Washington – was coming for secret talks with the MAMista high command. Coming to talk with their leader Ramón. Now she began to wonder if Lucas could be this person. The waitress put the check, and a cup of hot coffee, before her. She stirred it while her mind was on other things.

  ‘Our luggage?’ Lucas said.

  ‘Aboard the plane,’ Inez said.

  ‘Good girl.’

  Angel Paz got to his feet. He’d gone very pale. He counted out some money to pay for his food. Then he grabbed his pack. ‘I’ll go to the plane and make sure,’ he said.

  ‘That’s a good idea,’ Lucas said. It was better that he should be doing something than sitting around getting himself into a state. Lucas regretted not buying air-sickness tablets in the pharmacy. Frightened people were always the ones who vomit: motion-sickness is just a trigger for it.

  But Paz waited until Inez nodded her assent. As much as he resented the fact, and although she seemed jumpy, the woman was in charge. No one present wanted to dispute that.

  ‘He’ll be all right,’ said Lucas when Paz had gone.

  Thorburn put down the map he’d been studying and looked at him. Failing to make sense of the remark he shrugged. He helped himself to more of the french fries Paz had left, and returned to his map, comparing it with the most recent weather report. Weather maps covering the southern region consisted of vague inferences based upon the weather he could see out of the window. There was no one down there in the rain forest sending weather reports, and Tepilo couldn’t afford the satellite service.

  Inez looked out of the window to watch Paz. That he was recommended by the political branch in California did not impress her. ‘The Malibu Marxist’ Chori had called him. She’d seen dozens of young left-wing activities like him. They’d come from as far away as B.A. and Santiago. One lunatic travelled all the way from Berlin. They’d arrived full of surplus value theory and gone home racked with malaria and heavy with disillusion. She could see that the beating he’d had from the police had quietened him: perhaps he was already regretting his adventure. If she had her way, such urban young men would not be sent south. They were not psychologically right for the jungle, and always proved more trouble than they were worth. It was, of course, a simple matter of politics. MAMista supporters – whether real Spaniards or Spanish-speaking people in New York and Los Angeles – had to feel that they were part of the struggle. That’s why they kept the money coming. And that was why Ramón had to put up with the occasional ‘Malibu Marxist’ they sent to him.

  She looked at Lucas. This one was quite different: as tough as boot leather. He would survive anywhere, from Wall Street to fever swamp. Without watching what she was doing, she drank some coffee. It was very hot and burned her mouth. She gave a little cry of pain.

  ‘What’s the matter with you?’ asked Thorburn, looking up from his map. ‘You in love or something?’ He beamed at his joke.

  ‘Let’s go,’ Inez said. She looked at her watch.

  ‘Something you know and I don’t?’ asked Thorburn.

  She looked around to see that she was not overheard. ‘They are moving Dr Guizot to Number Three Presidio.’

  ‘Well, well,’ Thorburn said reflectively. ‘That could stir even this lot into life.’

  Lucas was watching them both. To him Inez explained. ‘The army could move in and close the airport.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Thorburn agreed. ‘All the airports, the coastal road and the ships too. And stop all the refuelling. They’ve done it before at any sign of trouble. Better that I don’t file a flight plan. Screw the weather report: we’ll manage without it.’

  They stood up. Thorburn finished the last few french fries and twisted the check round to see what it cost. He put some money on the table correct to the nearest peseta: no servicio.

  Lucas added his share plus a small tip. Then, with his bag over his shoulder, he followed them. As he walked past another occupied table, he noted with interest that their steaks were the same in every way as the one that Thorburn had eaten.

  8

  THE FLIGHT TO LIBERTAD.

  ‘How long can you keep him alive?’

  ‘Speedy Gonzales’ – Thorburn’s twin-engined Beech – might have been the best-maintained aircraft in Latin America but it would have been difficult to guess that from the state of its interior. One after the other they bent their heads to climb through the tiny door. The interior was cramped, gloomy and scorching hot. The plane had been standing in the sun, and its metal body was too hot to touch. Poised in the cabin doorway, Lucas stopped for a moment as he adjusted himself to the heat. The smell of warmed oil and fuel made him feel bilious. The cabin held five seats. They were upholstered in red plastic that was now faded, and torn to expose the springs. The cabin floor was littered with old newspaper, two dented oilcans, a rusty spanner and some ancient spark-plugs.

  Thorburn had been going round the plane doing his preflight check. He shouted ‘Here we go!’ as he climbed aboard. After putting Paz and Inez in the permanently anchored seats on the starboard side, he made sure the cabin door was locked and went up front through a bulkhead door to sit in the left-hand seat. He slid open the windows to let a trickle of air in but it didn’t make much difference to the temperature. He looked round to see Lucas, who was raking through his bag to see that everything was intact: his boots, a compass, shirts and underclothes; his odds and ends of medical supplies. It all seemed to be as he’d left it. ‘You’d better come and sit up front,’ Thorburn told Lucas. ‘Spread the load. That baggage weighs a ton back there.’

  Lucas went forward, ducking his head under the bulkhead and twisting round to get into the co-pilot’s seat. In front of him he had ‘spectacle-style’ flight controls and rudder pedals. Beside him Thorburn strapped in and looked round at the instruments with a studied familiarity. He touched the brakes and fuel selectors. One at a time he turned over the engines before switching them on and starting them up. As they coughed, spluttered and finally roared, he tapped the oil gauge and watched the needles crawl into life. Lucas had never been in a plane as run-down as this one. The Plexiglas was scratched and yellowing, the metal shone with the grey rainbows that come with age. Lucas was alarmed to see how many instruments were missing, their going marked only by circular holes in the instrument panel. Here and there were accessories that Thorburn had added: a ‘Fuzzbuster’ (Highway Patrol Radar Detector) that Thorburn had discovered picked up the military radar too. There was a tiny fan and, hanging from a plug, a camper’s gadget that Thorburn used to heat a cup of water.

  Thorburn yelled to tell Inez and Paz to strap in. It was cramped back there. Half the cabin was occupied with wooden crates. Inez had a portable typewriter in a scuffed leather case, and she wedged it tight against the bulkhead so that it wouldn’t fall over. Stuffed behind his seat Lucas found a bundle of old newspapers. He put them on the seat under his behind. It insulated him a little from the searing hot fabric and he realized that was its purpose.

  Thorburn reached to the ceiling and switched on the communications set and a babble of talk came from it. He put on the headphones and called the control tower, asking only for permission to take off and leave the controlled area. He hadn’t filed a flight plan but that was not unusual with such aircraft. Thorburn gave them a QFQ to waive rights to search and rescue in the event of disappearing altogether. He winked at Lucas and called to Paz and Inez to make sure they’d got ‘everything tied down’.

  Even to taxi out to the end of the runway was a relief, for it brought a movement of air which Lucas gulped greedily. At the end of the runway they waited to let a Cessna come in for a bumpy amateur landing. The cabin grew very hot again. Then came a squawk from the radio and Thorburn released the brakes.

  The Beech rushed down the ru
nway and climbed steadily into the hot air, upon which the wings took only slippery hold. Then Thorburn banked and they turned across the river and over the city. Ancient toy streetcars clattered past the cathedral and the shiny bronze Ramparts building that dominated the town. White office blocks and waterfront hotels became docks and then Thorburn banked more steeply over the shanty-town of Santa Ana. Then came the Park of Liberation, the golf club and the country club and the ‘montañas de oro’; the hilly suburb where every house had a tennis court and a very blue pool.

  They passed over the Cisneros ranch at six thousand feet, the cattle like fleas on an old army blanket of scrubby pasture. Then there came grass, coarse growths higher than a man, that dwarfed the tractors and farm equipment that moved along the paths hacked through it.

  ‘Now you’ll see some jungle,’ yelled Thorburn over the sound of the engines. ‘And look at those clouds! The rains will be early by the look of it.’ He throttled back to cruising speed. After listening for a minute to the steady beat of the engines, he switched to the low-octane fuel he’d had to buy on the previous leg.

  It was a land of few roads, just narrow tracks and rivers, only the widest of them visible under the spread of vegetation. Usually the sun caught only a pool or an ox-bow gleaming like a bead of sweat.

  Thorburn took his map from a clip at his elbow. He looked at it to confirm his course and then the Beech turned and Thorburn descended almost to the tops of the hills. Once or twice they flew below the height of the razor-back summits, following a curve of successive valleys, out of sight to anyone except the workers in the burned clearings where sugar cane grew. Such places were always on the banks of rivers, but as they went farther south the white water marked places that would make boat-travel hazardous. Cultivation became rarer until soon they were flying over land where there was no sign of man or of his work.

  Lucas had seen jungles before, but they had been the populated jungles of Asia where plantations and rice paddies made patterns for the air traveller, and provided a chance of survival for the traveller on foot. This landscape was quite different: a relentless tangle of green without the scale of man. Perhaps this empty place comforted the guerrilla, but Lucas did not think so. Guerrillas needed fish – peasants – amongst whom to swim and disappear when the army’s search-and-destroy patrols came.

  When they were through the first military area Thorburn ascended to 5,000 feet and reached out and juggled the mixture controls back a fraction of an inch at a time to find the leanest mixture that the engines would accept without stumbling. For Thorburn’s precarious profit-and-loss balance, every drop of fuel was precious.

  For a long time they flew on. Lucas looked round to see that Paz had fallen asleep, the sunlight reflected in his glasses. Inez was dozing. Lucas was able to study her as she sat eyes closed, hair disarranged and face without make-up. She was, he decided, one of the most beautiful women he’d ever seen. She stirred uneasily as if sensing that she was observed. Lucas looked away. Half an hour or so later the Beech crossed a high ridge to reveal a wide valley and a silver river winding through rolling hills. Thorburn nudged him and pointed with his index finger. Lucas looked down but could see nothing unusual. He put on the headphones and heard Thorburn say, ‘There it is.’

  ‘There what is?’ But even as he asked the question he could see that the lower slopes had the regular lines, and straggling patterns, of cultivated growth. As they lost height he saw workers, with bags across their backs, stripping leaves from the lime-green privet bushes.

  ‘Coca. See the huts along the river? They are the laboratories where they make the leaves into paste.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘A ton of leaves comes down to about nine kilograms of paste. That’s why,’ said Thorburn.

  ‘I thought it was difficult to find them.’

  ‘Bullshit. See the colour of the river water? That’s the quicklime they dump into it. All kinds of other shit goes into the river too: sulphuric acid and acetone and stuff. From a plane, any fool can spot the laboratories if they want to spot them. The fact is, nobody wants to!’

  ‘And there’s another, and another.’ The plantations were on the slopes that followed the river.

  ‘They call it the Valley of the Tears of Christ,’ said Thorburn. ‘Who says these buggers have no sense of humour, eh?’

  As they flew along the course of the river Lucas saw many more such jungle laboratories. Their sites were always marked by the multicoloured effluent that fanned out into the river. ‘So they are not difficult to find,’ Lucas affirmed.

  ‘If anyone really wanted to clamp down on them, they would just ask the big American chemical companies for their mailing list. Ask them where they send their chemicals,’ said the cynical Thorburn.

  As they flew on, the red sun gilded the lower edges of the storm-clouds and made long shadows on the ground. Thorburn poured himself a drink and then held up a vacuum jug of cold water. Lucas took it gratefully. ‘Wake them up,’ said Thorburn. ‘We’ll soon be there.’

  It was growing dark. Lucas looked down but saw no sign of anywhere to land even when they were almost upon the airstrip. The Libertad clearing was grass and hard mud alongside a wide and sluggish river. A stream cut the field in half. Thorburn banked in order to take a good look all round it. Men ran out to remove some tree boughs that had been arranged to look like natural growths in the middle of the field. Another lit a mixed pile of wet and dry tinder that would make a smoky fire. Its flame showed bright yellow in the grey evening light.

  ‘Strap in tight,’ Thorburn shouted. He’d landed here more than a hundred times but had never reconciled himself to it. One day they would be waiting for him. Although he would never admit it, he always chose his take-off from Tepilo to arrive here in the fading light. Today he had left it a bit late and the ground had darkened. He stared down at it. There was so much that could go wrong on a jungle strip that was virtually unattended. He came across the field in a low pass and looked for an old man named Blanco. He was a local that Thorburn trusted to know if the field was safe. The old man would wave him off if there was any obstruction. Sometimes he wondered what would happen if the Federalistas decided to stage a trap for him here. Even then he believed the old man would find some way of warning him. Thorburn had never spoken to Blanco about anything but fuel, anchoring the Beech or the state of the strip, but in some tacit way they had become close. Thorburn didn’t trust guerrillas. Especially not this woman, or the two men with her. All the guerrillas regarded Thorburn as no more than an ignorant bus driver. They hated him for always demanding payment in advance and resented his apolitical stance. None of them cared what happened to him or to his plane. What a way of making a living.

  For the third time he went round. As always he kept away from the San Luis side of the valley. The main road went through there. The villagers would hear the plane of course but they would not be able to identify it with certainty. At least that was the thought that comforted Thorburn. In fact it was well known that the Beech had begun regular trips down here just after Thorburn changed its colour from white to olive drab.

  The smoke from the little fire made a thin grey wire that paralleled the river. It usually did. This low it became clear that the stream that ran across the land was an artfully constructed shallow ditch that looked formidable from the air but provided no more than a jolt for the flyer who knew about it. The circuit ended and there was nothing for it but to land.

  Blanco raised an arm. Thorburn approached along the river at full power. He put the flaps fully down and the Beech shuddered, grasping at the thin warm air and dancing over the treetops. Knowing exactly the right moment to cut the power determined what sort of landing it would be.

  Now! Four hundred feet along the strip the Beech stalled into a perfect three-pointer. There was only the slightest of jolts. Thorburn dabbed the brakes gently to preserve his tyres and then snatched a quick look round to see who had noticed what a good landing it had been.

  Thor
burn cut the motors and there was a sudden silence. He groped behind his seat for the chocolate bars. That was the coolest place in the plane but even there chocolate became soft. Blanco opened the cabin door to let the passengers out. He waved to Thorburn. ‘Today,’ said the old Indian, ‘good! Today very good. Yes?’

  ‘Yes,’ Thorburn said. ‘Today very good, Blanco old cock.’ He threw the chocolate bars to him. It didn’t matter that they were soft; Blanco had no teeth.

  Angel Paz had not seen the jungle before. The wet heat reached in to get him. It was like entering a steam bath. Already fighting back his air-sickness, he flinched. ‘You’ll get used to it,’ Inez said.

  ‘Leave me alone!’ He spat out the words like obscenities, but Angel Paz found it difficult to breathe and he could feel the wet air draining into his lungs. He looked at the Englishman, who gave no sign to reveal if he was distressed or not. ‘Jesus, what a dump!’ said Paz to vent his anger, but he had not the strength to say it loudly and no one seemed to care about his reaction. His anger did not help his biliousness but he might have recovered had he not seen old Blanco munching greedily on a chocolate bar. He vomited and then sat down on the ground to wipe his face and recover his breath. Still no one gave him a glance.

  Inez supervised the unloading of the crates and the baggage. One of Blanco’s Indians was assigned to lead them along a narrow jungle path, to Blanco’s home. There they would wait for some unspecified ‘transport’.

  Summoning all his resources Paz got to his feet. From his bag he took the Luger and the leather belt, holster and cross-strap that he’d bought in the exploration shop. When he put it on over his safari jacket it made him look like some nineteenth-century slave trader. Lucas was looking at him with undisguised amusement. Paz pushed aside a bent-backed Indian who was about to carry his gear and insisted upon carrying it himself. ‘Let’s go,’ Paz snapped.

  The smell of rotting vegetation grew almost overwhelmingly as they followed the track through the undergrowth. When they came to where Blanco lived it was a riverside hut. Here was his cultivated patch on the edge of a clearing. His family – spindle-shanked hollow-faced Indians – were burning scrubland for cane. They wore torn jeans and Beethoven T-shirts and were coloured grey by the smoke.