by Len Deighton
Seeing the two men together at this meeting it would not have been easy to guess that Ramón and Marti regularly enjoyed more vituperative exchanges. Ramón was tired, and now he listened more than he spoke.
Ramón was the sole name he used. Even the police posters, their smudgy photo of him snapped at a long-ago conference in Havana, called him only Ramón. The police files provided no reliable information about his origins. Because of this, and because his Spanish was precise and measured, rumour provided him with an obscure background of guerrilla schooling in Managua and in Moscow. He was credited with masterminding violence in all corners of Latin America. Ramón was the mystery man that chaos and revolution always attracted. No one knew where he had come from. Or if they did, they kept very quiet about it.
Ramón nodded as Professor Dr Marti explained that his was the only true faith. He quoted Lenin as an archbishop might explain the words of Saint Paul to a congregation of lapsed Catholics. Always Ramón watched the eyes of the third of the ‘big three’ at the conference: Big Jorge.
How many armed Pekinistas Big Jorge had hidden there in the coffee and coca plantations of the northwest was the subject of endless speculation. From Ramón’s point of view it hardly mattered. All he wanted was a token strike in the capital by Professor Dr Marti’s transport workers plus one small armed raid, by identifiable Pekinista units, anywhere in the provincia de la Villareal before the end of the year. Those two events coinciding would divert the Federalistas. That would take the pressure off Ramón’s winter quarters in the south. But if the rumours were true, if Marti and Big Jorge intended to sit still while the army staged its jungle sweeps, then Ramón was going to get badly mauled.
Big Jorge smiled and drank his brandy. He’d noticed that there was a full bottle of it on the sideboard. Big Jorge could drink a lot of brandy without getting drunk. Not so many years before, he had been the senior foreman on a small coffee estate in Villareal. The childless owner had virtually promised to leave the land to Big Jorge. But the prospect frightened Big Jorge. How could he become a landlord when he had spent his life railing against them? A deeper fear was the responsibility that such ownership would bring to a man who was semi-literate. When the violencia came Big Jorge solved his problems in the way that so many other men had solved their problems before him: he marched off to war.
Big Jorge recruited the men of the small farms, their drivers, clerks and foremen too. The man who had renounced a legacy to become a guerrilla was hailed as a hero, but it was the sudden drop in coffee prices that made Big Jorge a political leader.
There is a theory that the decline in world coffee prices did more than anything else to create Latin America’s communist revolutions. Most of the serious fighting took place in the coffee-growing regions. The coffee farmers were mostly tenants on minifundios. When crop prices tumbled, those smallholders still had to pay their exorbitant rents and watch their families go hungry. But coffee grows on hilly land that is difficult to police. Such land is the home of the armed struggle. Castro’s struggle was centred in the Sierra Maestra, which is directly comparable to Big Jorge’s province, socially, climatically and economically.
No one had to tell Big Jorge that he would never be a Fidel, nor even a Ché. He was a worker as different from the accommodating old Professor Marti or the astringent Dr Guizot as any man could be. Big Jorge’s success was based upon his personality. His cheerful disposition and large muscular frame formed a combination to be found in prosperous butchers. He liked to wear what he was wearing today: a stetson, a smart suede jacket with fringes, pink-tinted glasses and a fine pair of tooled cowboy boots. He boasted that he’d worn this outfit from Tsingtao to Canton. Few believed him. His visit to China had been a brief one. It had occurred at a time when relations between Moscow and Peking were at a very low point and the Chinese sought friends from wherever they were to be found. Big Jorge’s time in China was marked by high banquets and low bows. All he brought back with him was that shy smile, the big si-si, two extra inches on his waistline and an indefatigable skill at keeping his forces intact by doing nothing.
Big Jorge’s years on the plantations had granted him a faultless fluency in a half-dozen Indian dialects. These had enabled him to recruit from tribes of hunters and fishers, as well as from the seasonal workers who came for the coffee harvest. Nothing could better demonstrate the communist axiom that labour is at the root of all wealth, than to see the authority that Big Jorge had acquired as his numbers grew. He spoke to Ramón as an equal, and to Professor Dr Marti as to a wealthy, senile uncle. And neither of those worthies was bold enough to remark that a large proportion of Big Jorge’s fiefdom was now growing the coca crop, and that he was paid a substantial fee for every kilo of coca paste that went out of those ‘laboratories’.
Professor Dr Marti continued with his opening address. Big Jorge’s smile, more than anything else, convinced him that his political points were not going unheeded. Marti shifted his weight so that his chair – one leg of it short – swung back a fraction. A loose floortile rattled each time he did it. He stopped the movement by putting a toe to the floor. He said, ‘Of course, Dr Guizot is revered by everyone … by me more than revered. But Dr Guizot is not a strategist.’ By the measured authority of his delivery, Marti was able to imply that he was a strategist of some renown. It is a state of mind readily adopted by historians accorded the unlimited confidence that comes from impartial hindsight. ‘When Dr Guizot called for the General Strike, the workers, the students and the intelligentsia responded.’ He paused. ‘I responded; you responded; everyone. But that was not enough; he needed a disaffected soldiery to blunt the efficiency of the army and the Federalistas, as a weapon of the government …’
Marti looked around. Big Jorge nodded. Ramón didn’t nod. Ramón had hoped that by coming here with the news of a beloved Dr Guizot, suffering from a slight ailment and weary after his ordeal, the meeting would agree to anything that Dr Guizot asked. That was not the way it was going. Ramón looked around the table. Had they guessed the secret? Did they know that Guizot was dead and buried in some forgotten piece of stinking jungle? When Marti looked hard at Ramón, Ramón nodded too. For the time being he didn’t want to upset anyone: he desperately needed help.
Marti poured iced water into his lemon juice, added a spoonful of sugar, stirred it vigorously and then sipped some. He said, ‘For your support, Ramón, the students are already planning a big demonstration. My members will be there in the front line of protest.’ He was talking about the college lecturers and schoolteachers.
‘We need more than that,’ said Ramón.
Big Jorge said, ‘We all know about the students, Professor.’ Big Jorge, who had never been to school, was always caustic about the students. ‘They make an impressive sound when they are all chanting for freedom in Liberation Plaza. But each year a third of them graduate, and settle down into cosy middle-class jobs and start families in the suburbs.’
Professor Marti chuckled. It was a chuckle calculated to acknowledge that Big Jorge was talking, not only about the students, but about the whole of Marti’s communist party of Spanish Guiana. But the chuckle was not so lengthy that it sounded like agreement, nor so sincere that it gave Big Jorge a chance to elaborate on his thesis.
Marti dabbed his soft white beard to knock away a dribble of lemon juice. He said, ‘But we must remember that it has always been the flamboyant capering of the students – of which many round this table disapprove – that has made headlines in the foreign press, and gained support from overseas.’
‘And frightened the peasants, and antagonized the soldiers and provoked the police,’ Ramón added. ‘And what for? I agree with Big Jorge: the students are neither effective as a fighting force, nor effective economically in the way that factory workers, plantation workers and miners can be.’
Big Jorge wheezed musically. Marti took another sip of lemonade.
Ramón continued, ‘Dr Guizot is not asking anyone at this table to take his orders
. He wants only one small favour: a token of working-class unity.’
‘Your people are in the rain forest, Ramón,’ said Marti. ‘Mine are in the towns. My men are vulnerable in ways that your men are not.’
Provocatively Big Jorge said, ‘Then they must take part in the active struggle, Dr Marti.’
‘No one is asking for that,’ Ramón said urgently. He knew that this apparent plea for support was only Big Jorge’s way of driving a wedge between himself and Marti. Marti’s force was efficient when it wanted to be: the way that Marti could be spirited off to such meetings as this was evidence of the conspiratorial skills of the old-time communists. But if they took to the field, Marti’s men would have to take orders from the most experienced commander, which could only mean Ramón. Marti would die rather than let that happen.
Ramón said, ‘We all need the fruits of your excellent intelligence service, Professor Dr Marti. We need to know where the army will strike after the rains. And in what strength. We need to know if the Americans will let the government have helicopters … and gunships, and if so how many.’
‘Helicopters,’ said Marti. Having sipped his lemonade he pursed his lips. It was difficult to know whether this grimace was at the prospect of sharing his intelligence. He spooned more sugar into his glass before drinking again. Asked the unanswerable, Marti always fell back on his lecture notes. ‘Helicopters do not change the basic character of the socialist struggle, nor the inevitability of the fall of capital.’
‘But they do kill guerrilleros,’ said Ramón in a pleasant voice.
‘Yes, they do,’ said Marti seriously. He preferred to discuss such things as objectively as possible, and he was heartened to think that Ramón might be learning some of the same equanimity from him. Marti searched through the pockets of his cream-coloured linen jacket to find his curly Meerschaum pipe. His party was now dominated by middle-class members. They used their CP cards to assuage the guilt of the nearby shantytowns, and of the sight of starving beggars who were arrested if they went into the tourist sectors of the city. Thus Marti’s bourgeoisie demonstrated its political passion, while the Benz regime enjoyed a feeling of political toleration. Out of this came Marti’s power. From his middle-class members, with their entrée to bureau and to business, came his intelligence system.
Perversely Marti refused to admit that his party was no longer worker-based. So he could not bring himself to provide for Ramón any information of the sort he needed. Marti pushed tobacco into his pipe and lit it carefully. ‘Helicopters are dangerous,’ he said finally.
Ramón tried again. ‘Dr Guizot would appreciate even a demonstration … If your electricity workers could black out the capital. If the airport could be brought to a standstill for two or three days. Anything that would make them think that we are all going to do battle against them.’
Big Jorge wheezed again. The smell of Marti’s pipe tobacco had awakened his craving. He reached into his pocket for a cigar and bit off the end of it. He sniffed it and lit it. He did not offer one to the others. Such personal habits often provide a clue to a man’s nature, thought Ramón. A man who did not even think of offering his companions a chance to share his food, his drink or his smokes was not the sort of man to be with in the jungle. There were not many men who were, and Ramón felt a sudden deep affection for Maestro and Santos and all the men who served with him.
From the other end of the table, one of the other delegates spoke. He was a tough little black miner who had formed a breakaway trade union for the open-cast quarry workers who used to be with Marti. He had long ago lost any illusions about Marti. He asked if Marti knew anything about the Soviet Union’s payments to Castro Cuba. Already the contributions from Spain’s government to Cuba had ended. When those big Russian payments stopped too, the shock would eventually be felt by everyone around the table. But if Marti knew he wasn’t telling. He gave a long answer that revealed nothing.
Ramón did not listen to Marti. He was wondering if his demand for support had been wise. What would these men do if Ramón stood up and told them that without their strenuous help, his MAMista army might be utterly destroyed before the time came around for the next frente meeting?
He looked round the table. They were hard, self-centred men. All, for their different reasons, regarded Ramón as a heretic. Perhaps they would not fling a match upon the tinder at his feet, but neither were they likely to break through the cordon to fling a bucket of water. Perhaps he had gone far enough in admitting his need. More admissions might only hasten his demise. There was another way, but it didn’t include the people around this table. If they were determined to force him to go to the enemy and make a deal, so be it. They were all looking at him. Automatically Ramón said, ‘We have never ceased the struggle. Be assured we will not stop now.’
Marti attended to his curly pipe as a device to keep them waiting for his ponderous dicta. When he had it going well, he puffed smoke and said, ‘You speak to me of fighting, Ramón, as if it should grant you sole right to our combined resources.’ Marti looked at Big Jorge. Big Jorge nodded.
Ramón tried to hide his feelings. If Ramón failed, Marti’s members would thank the old man for keeping them out of it. If Ramón succeeded, then it would be Marti’s members who inherited the power of an exhausted fighting force. Marti leaned forward and stroked his beard. When he spoke he was committing the words to memory. He wanted to write this reply into his memoirs, which were already half-finished. ‘We will give you anything you ask to continue the struggle, but do not ask a condor to fight alongside the fishes. We are not equipped to join you in the rain forest, Ramón.’ He nodded.
Ramón picked up his beer and sipped some. He did it as a way of concealing the rage that welled up in him. He was angry at himself for ever believing that these people might listen to him and want to help. Why should he ever have expected to find any more sentiment in politics than there was in detergents, in shipping, in oil or in the stock exchange?
Big Jorge got up and walked across the carpet to pour himself another brandy. He stood at the wooden grille. It was dark and cool in the room but outside in the courtyard the sun was hot and quickly evaporated the water that spilled over from the fountain. From the kitchens there came the sounds of men working and on the air there was an aroma of woodsmoke. Big Jorge said, ‘I’ve arranged a good meal: matambre.’
Ramón’s men were hungry. They did not often see the rolled beef ‘hunger-killer’ that Big Jorge was setting before them.
‘Wonderful,’ said Professor Dr Marti, although his asceticism gave him preferences for light foods of vegetable origin.
‘We are all indebted to you,’ Ramón said as Big Jorge resumed his seat at the conference table. Perhaps Big Jorge had not said it to remind Ramón that this lunch, like much of the food that filtered down to the MAMistas in the south, was carried illicitly, and at considerable risk, by truck drivers under Big Jorge’s banner.
And perhaps Professor Dr Marti’s nod was not a reminder that most of that food, as inadequate as it might be, originated from delivery dockets padded and forged by his party members. Ramón knew that his bargaining power was undermined by his dependence upon these two men. He’d hoped to use the posthumous goodwill of Dr Guizot as a lever upon them. But they were shrewd enough to see that no political advancement could come to them by advancing the cause of the Guizot–Ramón axis.
‘The opportunity will never be better,’ said Ramón, trying one last time. ‘This winter, while flying conditions are at the worst, and before the Federalistas get American help … With the peseta falling and a renewed campaign of violence in our towns … This winter we could achieve power, comrades.’
Marti shook his head sadly. ‘Your forces are weak and you are too dependent upon the cities for your food and your ammunition. Also the peasants in the northwest are not won over to your struggle.’
Ramón could have retorted that peasants in the northwest were cocaleros making big bucks for Big Jorge. They had become a
part of the drugs network that was grossing almost a billion dollars a year. They would never be won over to any workers’ struggle.
Perhaps seeing what was in Ramón’s mind, Big Jorge said, ‘Think what road-blocks would do. Road-blocks round all the important towns, and road junctions. What would that do to your supplies? Already the army is doing random checks on traffic in and out of the capital. By the end of the year, will they not be squeezing you?’
‘We’ll ambush their convoys and attack their checkpoints,’ Ramón said.
‘Of course you will,’ Big Jorge replied patiently. ‘But they can spare soldiers in a way that you can’t spare suppliers.’ Or the help of my drivers, he might have added.
Professor Dr Marti took his pipe from his mouth and waved it. Always the theorist he said, ‘Your weakness is that the northern part of your province was an army exercise area for so long. The peasants got used to the soldiers, and the army knows its way around there. In the central provinces there is residual hatred for the army; you do not have that advantage in the south.’
‘The peasants understand,’ Ramón said, and only with difficulty suppressed the words – better than you do.
Dr Marti smiled. He reached out and touched Ramón’s shoulder. ‘You are a fine man and a good comrade, Ramón. And yet I fear you believe we fail in our duty to you.’
Ramón said nothing.
Marti said, ‘You think my heart does not bleed for your sufferings? You think I don’t weep for your casualties? You believe that this revolution can be completed overnight, but it will take a decade … a decade, if we are lucky. Two decades if the economy does not improve.’
These last words made Ramón look up sharply. He raised an eyebrow.
Marti met his eyes. ‘Ah, yes. You have seen the movement and the violencia grow from the soil of economic hardship. You have recruited from depressed regions. You wish to believe that these are signs of the capitalist system destroying itself. But look at Eastern Europe.’
