MAMista

by Len Deighton

  ‘They’ll get worried when the Volvo does not return,’ Inez warned him. The driver of the American oil company’s truck had spotted Ramón and his men on the road. He’d been shot.

  ‘One Indian; one truck. Americans do not worry about such things.’ Ramón dismissed her fears.

  Inez didn’t argue, although she knew he was wrong. The Americans were neurotic about the personal safety of the oil company employees, even when the employees were locals.

  ‘I’m going back for some sleep,’ said Ramón.

  Soon after Ramón departed Angel Paz joined Inez at the lookout point. He seemed to have recovered from his bout of sickness, and from his first encounter with the jungle heat and humidity. Physically he was tough and he’d inherited – or borrowed – that Latin attitude to women that combined both exaggerated respect and contempt. ‘Do you know how to use that gun?’ he asked as he moved the rifle to get into place alongside her.

  She looked at him for a moment or two before replying. ‘Yes, I do.’ He was an obnoxious young man: the sort of Yankee know-all that the anti-American propaganda depicted.

  ‘How many people have you counted?’

  ‘I’m not counting them.’

  He picked up the field-glasses and used them to look down at the American camp. ‘It’s about time you began. What the hell have you been doing?’

  ‘Ramón estimated the numbers himself. He watched the huts at sun-up. It’s too late now to start counting. They’ll stay inside the air-conditioned huts as much as possible.’

  Paz continued to study the camp. ‘A frontal assault is no use. Ramón will get his guys slaughtered the way he did last time. We need something a little more subtle.’

  ‘And you will provide it?’ she said mockingly.

  ‘I don’t see anyone else around who might,’ said Paz. ‘Ramón is a great man: I know that, but is he politically motivated?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ She was truly surprised.

  ‘Or is he just a man who wants to fill empty bellies?’

  ‘Isn’t that what politics are for?’

  ‘I’m talking about real politics. I know you got your honours degree in Economics, but what do you know about revisionism, vanguardism, the historical traps of inevitability, economic determinism or Trotsky’s concept of permanent revolution?’

  ‘Not much,’ admitted Inez.

  ‘Right. No disrespect but are you really suited to work as a secretary to Ramón? With the right strategy he could wind up running a showcase Marxist state.’ He looked at her. That the revolution might eventually make folk-heroes of political innocents like Inez Cassidy exasperated him.

  She looked back at him in horror. There was no need to say who would frame the ‘right strategy’.

  Paz mistook her dismay for surprise and deep respect. He launched into one of his favourite stories about a man who had returned to the battlefield to save a paperback copy of Marxism and Linguistics. Then he told her of a Cuban who’d carried a copy of Lenin’s The State and Revolution with him until it was a collection of dog-eared pages held together in a plastic bag.

  She closed her eyes tight and let him prattle on. She was angry with this clown. The revolution was too dependent upon romantic folklore. In her opinion it required more economics and less heroics.

  ‘The dumb Englishman should be down there with those guys,’ said Paz. ‘He’s one of them.’ It was a remark that he was later to regret.

  ‘He was a colonel in the army. He was sent to give us medical aid.’

  Paz spat. It was a habit he’d acquired since joining the guerrilla force a few hours previously. ‘To appease their conscience, the capitalists will send a bottle of aspirins and a packet of plasma.’

  ‘If the plasma saved the life of Ramón, it would be worth it, would it not?’

  ‘As long as the Limey doesn’t think he’s bought a place among us.’

  ‘Ramón will decide who has a place with us,’ said Inez. It was a snub but it had no effect.

  ‘Go back down there and sleep,’ said Paz. ‘One watcher is enough.’ He picked up the field-glasses and studied the survey camp again. There was a guard at the gate, another at the inner compound where the transport was kept, and another on the roof of the main building. All the sentries there were Indians. He put down the glasses. Inez hadn’t moved. ‘Historically,’ he announced, having given the subject some thought, ‘it will be seen that Ramón’s basic failure has been in not winning over the Indians. All over Latin America the same thing has happened. The Indians have failed to support the revolution. Right-wing governments have used them as guides and informers.’

  ‘They have tribal structures,’ said Inez. ‘It’s difficult for them to adapt to the communal life of the guerrilla armies. For them the family is everything. They have complex rituals for births and deaths and for spring and for harvest. It will take a long time to reconcile Marx with those ancient traditions.’

  ‘There are ways.’

  ‘The Church did not find them,’ said Inez. She was keeping her temper under control. In Latin America women soon learned the necessity of deferring to male ego, but she didn’t enjoy it.

  ‘Sometimes it is easier to see the problems and their solutions from a distance,’ said Paz.

  ‘There are no easy solutions here,’ said Inez.

  An odd idea suddenly occurred to Angel Paz and he turned his head to look at her. ‘Have you got a crush on the old Englishman?’

  ‘What an idea.’ Inez laughed quietly and got to her feet. ‘I’m going now; don’t doze off.’

  The suggestion that he might sleep while on duty was as grave an insult as any Paz could think of. He moved the rifle closer to his side and then picked up the field-glasses again and studied the American camp as if he’d not heard her.

  ‘I’m off then. Come and wake me if anything happens. Your relief will come up here at two. Three blasts of the whistle means we re-form back at the river.’

  Paz grunted. He heard the woman miss her footing once but he didn’t look round until she was well down the hillside scrambling on all fours. She was stupid, antagonistic and patronizing. As for the Englishman … Angel Paz detested the old fool.

  The moon provided enough light for Maestro to see the jeep bumping down the hill to meet him. He had spoken to Ramón over the radio. He knew that Ramón was sending the English doctor to lead him back to the assembly point. From there they would attack the American survey camp. How the English doctor fitted into Ramón’s scheme of things, Maestro did not know.

  When Maestro’s truck stopped, the other vehicles moved under the cover of the jungle. At night such precautions were of little value but it was the standing order for all movements using their precious motor transport. Maestro climbed down from the cab and greeted Lucas with a nod. ‘You’re the doctor?’ Maestro was middle-aged: slim with heavily lidded eyes and a bandit moustache.

  ‘Yes.’ They could hear the noises of the rain forest now that the engines were silent. It came awake at night.

  ‘Follow me. You are needed urgently.’

  ‘You have casualties?’ Lucas was puzzled. Ramón had told him nothing about casualties. Orders had clearly stated that all casualties must be left on the battlefield.

  ‘I said do you have casualties?’ Lucas asked again.

  Maestro picked his way back along the rutted track but still did not answer.

  ‘You are expected at the assembly point inside the hour.’ Lucas said it in the waspish manner of a British staff officer who is not used to disobedience. At least that’s how it sounded to Maestro, and he did not like it.

  Maestro would not be treated like a peón. He was one of the many middle-class recruits who’d flocked to Ramón at the time of the violencia. He’d been a senior lecturer in chemistry at the University. Many other such recruits had long since returned to their comfortable suburban houses, their VW Passats and deep-freezes. Maestro stayed on. He was a tenacious soldier and a dedicated anti-fascist. His readiness t
o tackle the administrative jobs and to listen while Ramón – a virtually uneducated peasant – reasoned out his plans had made him the de facto MAMista chief of staff.

  Maestro was no longer the young revolutionary firebrand he’d once been. He was as exhausted as any of his men. They had fought for, and held, the cattle yards at Misión. Cut to pieces by guns sited on the rooftops, they had held on until Ramón and his force covering Dr Guizot were withdrawn to the road. Only then did Maestro let the rearguard start to move out.

  His force was shattered. Almost all their wounded had been abandoned to the enemy: they’d lost comrades and friends and relatives too. The shock of battle, the shame of abandoning the wounded, the long forced march to join the transport; these were things that made it hard for them to recognize the victory against the fascists that Maestro told them it was. The Latin temperament that had sent them into battle yelling and singing now caused them to sit anguished and silent in the trucks, except when they crept away to sob, or to offer a secret prayer to whatever saint redeems the souls of men who pretend to be non-believers.

  Lucas pursed his lips to show his annoyance. Maestro brought down the tailgate and flipped back the canvas of the old Dodge one and a half ton ‘six-by-six’ truck that held the casualties. Flies buzzed around angrily, making sudden beads of light as they flew around the pressure lamps. Two ‘medics’ stood there attending to two casualties. They stood up, heads bent under the canvas top. Lying in two pools of greenish light were the wounded men. One was doubled up in pain. The other sat in the corner, a bandage around his face and his knees grasped tight to his chin. Lucas took down one of the lights and held it so that he could see the man stretched out on the floor of the truck. There was a bullet wound in the fleshy part of the upper arm. The man was probably about twenty-five but his grey sunken cheeks and wide-open eyes made him look older. He was weak and very frightened.

  Maestro had climbed into the truck behind Lucas. ‘The medic put a tourniquet on him,’ he said.

  Lucas did not respond except to put the lamp into Maestro’s hand and raise it to the position he wanted. The man had lost a lot of blood. You didn’t have to be a doctor to know that. It was spilled all over the floor of the truck: brown and sticky, like floury gravy from a cheap restaurant. There were flies everywhere now, as the movements disturbed their feast.

  Lucas put his first-aid kit on the floor and opened it so that everything was accessible. Then he untied the tourniquet. It was no more than a piece of wood and a webbing belt. He stood aside. The man whimpered as the blood squirted. Some of it splashed upon Maestro and upon the canvas cover of the truck. Lucas pressed the wound with his thumb. Then he picked up his scissors and cut into the wound to find the artery. For a moment Lucas thought he was going to make a mess of it – it was ages since he’d last treated a gunshot wound – but the old legerdemain returned in time. He clipped the artery. Then he took a piece of lint and prodded it into the hole in the flesh. The man said a prayer, babbling so that the words all blended into one incoherent sound.

  Maestro was biting his lip as he watched it. Like so many brave warriors he was curiously squeamish in the face of surgery. ‘Will he be all right? He was very weak. He couldn’t walk the last few steps.’

  ‘How long since you put that on?’

  Maestro looked at the ‘medic’, who stared back blankly. Then he looked at his watch and tried to calculate the answer. He was too tired for such figuring. He shook his head. ‘A long time.’

  ‘He’ll probably be all right,’ Lucas said, more for the sake of the injured man than because that was his true prognosis. He turned to the other casualty. Maestro patted the shoulder of the second injured man and held the light while Lucas unwrapped the bandage from his face. The man had his eyes closed and at first Lucas could not see that anything was wrong. Then the man’s eyelids fluttered. What a mess!

  ‘How did you do this?’ Lucas asked. He wanted to be sure that the man could speak and think. In fact he wanted to make sure the man was still alive.

  ‘As we retreated,’ whispered the injured man apologetically. ‘It went in at the back.’

  Lucas craned his head to see the point of entry. The bullet had entered his neck at the back and come out through his eye, removing the eyeball. The lid was still intact but under it there was an empty space. Little damage could be seen while the eyelid was closed.

  ‘You won the lottery,’ Lucas said in his adequate Spanish. ‘No brain damage; no artery pierced, a thousand to one chance. A million to one, perhaps. I don’t know.’

  ‘You heard that, Eduardo?’ Maestro told him. ‘You are going to be all right. The doctor said so.’

  The casualty nodded stiffly to acknowledge Maestro’s encouragement.

  ‘Pain?’ said Lucas.

  ‘Not too bad,’ said the man, but Lucas could see that the pain was bad.

  ‘I have a little morphine,’ Lucas said.

  ‘Save it for him,’ said the man called Eduardo, indicating the other casualty. He grinned despite his pain. So did Maestro and the two soldiers. It was all part of the ever-present machismo.

  ‘As you wish,’ said Lucas. He turned to the first casualty and inspected the wound again. He pinched the lower part of the injured arm. It remained white. ‘Can you feel it?’ Lucas asked.

  The man said nothing. Maestro said, ‘The doctor asked you if you could feel it.’

  ‘I can feel it,’ said the man. Lucas didn’t believe him. The pinched arm remained white. The arm was dead. If the man was to survive someone was going to have to hack it off. Lucas did not look forward to the task.

  To Maestro Lucas said, ‘Don’t you have a paramedic?’

  ‘Not with the battle group,’ said Maestro.

  ‘Surgical instruments? Medical supplies? At your main camp?’

  ‘We are well equipped but we have nothing with us.’

  Lucas had heard of medics on battlefields using bayonets to hack off limbs. It was not a task he would look forward to. He didn’t believe Maestro’s claim to be well equipped. It was machismo again. He was beginning to suspect that Ramón’s guerrilla army probably had no medical resources whatsoever. He wondered what he would find in the southern camp. ‘Let’s get moving,’ Lucas said. He knew that Ramón wanted the men to have a few hours’ sleep before the sun came up.

  Ramón was not one of those commanders, so common in history books, who require little or no sleep. He’d had little rest in the week before arriving at Silver River. Now, with sentries posted to watch the survey camp, he enjoyed a deep sleep that continued until well after the sun was up. Awakened when the messenger arrived, he went back to sleep again immediately. He remained in his hammock all morning, scribbling in his notebook or sometimes consulting the map that he kept tucked under the pillow.

  It had been almost dawn before Maestro arrived with the trucks. His men were still cleaning themselves up in the stream and talking and smoking and resting while Maestro and Ramón conferred. Inez was present; they depended upon her memory and her familiarity with the metal box of papers that went everywhere that Ramón went. When they had finished their discussion, Inez typed out the orders and made sure the war diary was up to date. Paperwork was important to Ramón: Ramón had the instincts of the politician.

  Then he sent for Angel Paz. ‘How well do you speak English?’

  ‘Perfectly.’

  ‘And Americans speak exactly the same language?’

  ‘Sure.’

  Ramón went to the plastic bag the messenger had brought. From it he brought clothes: starched khaki shirt and trousers, white T-shirt, webbing belt, plain shoes and black tie. ‘This will fit you. You won’t need the tie,’ said Ramón. ‘They don’t wear hats or ties.’

  ‘You want me to dress like one of the survey team?’ Paz asked. Ramón said nothing. ‘To get through the gate?’

  ‘There would be less shooting that way.’

  ‘Why do we want less shooting?’

  ‘Do not challenge m
e, Angel Paz.’

  ‘Forgive me, Comrade General.’

  ‘Comrade Ramón will do. “Comrade General” is for the Press notices.’

  ‘Yes, comrade Ramón.’

  ‘Can you talk your way through the gate?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Get the jeep halfway in, so that the sentry cannot close the gate. We need only two or three minutes.’

  ‘Rely upon me, comrade Ramón.’

  ‘I must,’ said Ramón. ‘There is no one here with a complexion as light as yours. The one who was to do it died in Misión.’

  Paz nodded.

  ‘And no gun,’ said Ramón.

  Angel Paz wanted to argue. A man with a gun could make sure the gate remained open. Without a gun he stood a good chance of having his head blown off. The sentries on the gate had guns. Paz had a feeling that Ramón didn’t completely trust his discretion with a gun, and he was right.

  Lucas had been up half the night. He’d cut off an arm at the elbow using an ancient hacksaw from a toolkit he’d found in one of the trucks. The two medics had been no help at all. They were eighteen-year-old twins – Rómulo and Rafael – who had told Maestro some story about working in a hospital somewhere in the north. One had screamed at the first cut of the hacksaw and the other one had vomited. Had Inez not been there to help, Lucas would have been trying to manage alone. Lucas was not happy with the result of his surgery. The man was still in shock. He was dehydrated and had lost a lot of blood. Even when fit and well such a man would not be strong enough to take such trauma. Worse, Lucas was beginning to think that he should have amputated higher up. This was the hell of combat surgery: knowing that under other circumstances you might have done better. Long ago he’d vowed never to get into the torment of that again. Yet here he was, and hating it.

  Lucas smoked one of the cigars he’d bought during his delay at Caracas airport. He was not a tobacco addict but there were times when he liked to sit and reflect, and a decent cigar gave such moments another dimension of pleasure. It was a breathtaking view. Some men would have journeyed a thousand miles to enjoy the view that Lucas had from this hill, but in South America such natural wonders were commonplace.