Adam thought the comparison in rather bad taste and swiftly replied that until recently he had often made his dinner off sandwiches at a coffee-stall; then they agreed to meet at the Ritz at two o’clock.
That evening Adam took Chela to the ballet, downtown at the Palace of Fine Arts. He was not a balletomane, but the performance had been cracked up to him so he expected something exceptional. In that he was disappointed. The first ballet he enjoyed, because it was a most colourful spectacle of Aztecs in their gorgeous robes and wonderful feathered headdresses. But the others were only folk-dances of the previous century, which he found trite and boring. Afterwards they went on to dance at the Via Fontana.
On the Wednesday Adam stood for some while on the pavement of the Reforma endeavouring in vain to get a taxi. Then, to his surprise, in response to his upraised arm, a small yellow car pulled up in front of him, which already had two people and the driver squeezed into it. After a hasty exchange with the driver Adam learned that it was one of a fleet of such vehicles which plied up and down the main thoroughfare of the city, picking up and dropping single passengers wherever they liked along the route for the modest sum of a single peso.
As he clambered into the remaining free seat he thought it a splendid idea, and what a benefit it would be to Londoners if a similar service were instituted from Marble Arch along Oxford Street to the City and from Knightsbridge up Piccadilly through the Strand and Fleet Street to St. Paul’s. A peso was only sevenpence, and for a shilling such a run would be cheap.
The communal taxi decanted him opposite the spacious Alameda Square, with its palm trees, gardens and the huge Centre of Culture which had window displays of books in every language. From there it was only five minutes’ walk to the Calle Madero and he found the Ritz without difficulty.
It was far from pretentious, as to enter it one had to walk through a short arcade with shops displaying Mexican craft-work and souvenirs, but it had a comfortable cocktail lounge in which Hunterscombe was waiting for him.
During the hour that followed Adam grew to like the Ritz more and more. It had a pleasant old-fashioned air about it and a regular clientele of well-to-do business men. The tables were set well apart, most of the waiters were of the friendly old-retainer type and the food was excellent; although, as he saw from the menu, the prices were reasonable.
It was not until he was enjoying a Mexican pudding of preserved pears, meringue and short pastry that their conversation became of any particular interest, and he unconsciously led up to it himself by asking if his host knew Monsignor Alberuque.
Hunterscombe gave him a swift glance and replied, ‘Yes, slightly. What do you make of him?’
‘I’ve met him only once and he gave me the shivers,’ Adam said frankly. ‘Why, I don’t know, but those dead black eyes of his put my hackles up.’
‘That rather surprises me, for he has tremendous charm. But he is certainly a queer fish and, curiously enough, to ask you what you knew about him was one of the reasons I asked you to lunch.’
‘It surprises me that you should even have known that I’d met him.’
‘Elementary, my dear Watson. You were down at Cuernavaca last week-end, and he is as thick as thieves with Chela.’
‘I saw him only during one evening, so I know hardly anything about him,’ Adam lied glibly. ‘But why are you interested?’
Hunterscombe took a long pull at his cigarette. ‘Look, old boy. You’ll treat what I am about to say as confidential, I’m sure. The fact is we have reason to believe that there is trouble brewing in this country, and that Alberuque has a big finger in it.’
‘What sort of trouble?’
‘Possibly a revolution.’
Greatly intrigued, Adam began to fish for information by saying, ‘I thought revolutions in Mexico were a thing of the past.’
‘Most people do, but they are endemic here. It’s in the blood of the people. Do you know much about Mexican history?’
‘I’ve read quite a lot about the ancient civilisations and the Conquest, but I haven’t bothered to go into all the complications since Independence.’
‘Then on account of what I want to talk to you about, I must give you a short résumé.’ Hunterscombe tapped out his cigarette and lit another. ‘Apart from a few Indian risings, there was no serious trouble until Hidalgo led the rebellion of 1810. He made a mess of things, but one of his followers, José Morelos, took over and more or less got the better of the Spaniards and Creoles, who hated each other but teamed up to defend their wealth and privileges.
‘Morelos as good as had the country in his hands, but he made the mistake of calling a Congress to proclaim a Republic. His preoccupation with the future led to his being caught napping and executed; so it was not until 1821 that Mexico actually gained her independence.’
‘I know that much and quite a bit more,’ Adam remarked.
‘Maybe you do, chum,’ replied the Wing Commander, brushing up his long moustache. ‘But to make my point, I want to refresh your memory about what has been going on in this country for the past one hundred and fifty years. To continue. It was upon Morelos’s programme that all the revolutions that followed were based. He proposed to confiscate the great estates of the rich and the Church and restore the land to the Indians. A royalist Colonel named de Iturbide, who had put paid to Morelos, took over; but he ratted on his Spanish pals and had himself proclaimed as Emperor Agustín I.
‘In due course Iturbide was overthrown by an extraordinarily shifty customer, one Antonio de Santa Anna. He was like a cat with nine lives, or rather eleven, for between 1833 and 1855 there were eleven periods when he was master of Mexico. To get the masses on his side he started off by being very much to the Left, but he didn’t give a damn for anyone but himself, and gradually watered down all the reforms that had been set in motion until the masses were back pretty much where they had started, with the rich and the priests jumping on their necks.
‘The Texans didn’t like him, so they decided to break away. That led to a civil war which ended in his defeat and capture by a lad named Sam Houston. He then bought his own freedom by giving Texas independence.
‘The Mexicans did not like that and, in 1846, reasserting their claim to Texas led them into a war with the United States. They lost it, and it cost them not only Texas for good but also California—the best part of a million square miles of territory. In addition to that, when Santa Anna got into power again he was feeling hard up, so he sold a large part of Arizona and New Mexico to the Yankees for three million quid.’
Adam smiled. ‘Then, by and large, he proved a pretty expensive President.’
‘He certainly did. In eighteen years he reduced Mexico from the fourth largest country in the world to less than half its original size. Anyhow, the people were not only fed up about that, but because he had let the rich and the Church get back on their necks again. Then there emerged an extraordinary fellow named Benito Juárez. He was a full-blooded Zapotec Indian, one hundred per cent honest, a first-class General, a great law-giver and a puritan ascetic.
‘Juárez led a successful rebellion against the reactionaries and brought in the Constitution of 1857. It went even further than the programme of Morelos. Not only was the Church forbidden to own property and priests and nuns freed from their vows, but all privileges were abolished, it gave freedom to the Press and decreed free education for the children of all classes.
‘The Church and the Conservatives weren’t standing for that, so it resulted in a most bloody Civil War. Juárez won through but, by the time he had, the country was so disrupted that it was bankrupt. As French, Spanish and British investors could not get their money, their governments decided to intervene. Napoleon III sent out the Archduke Maximilian, backed by a French army, to become Emperor. Well, you know what happened to that poor well-meaning poop. Three years later Juárez did a magnificent job of work. It was he who created modern Mexico, and in 1872 he died in office. He was followed by one of his generals, Porfirio Díaz
. Under him the pendulum swung back again. In his way he, too, was a patriot, but he was no believer in democracy. He ruled Mexico for thirty-four years—from 1876 to 1910. During his Presidency he spent Lord knows how many millions on ornate buildings and extravagant ceremonies, his idea being to make Mexico appear great in the eyes of visiting foreigners. But, of course, the money was squeezed out of the wretched people and, as from top to bottom his officials were open to bribery, the rich and the top priests again lived like fighting cocks. Under Díaz, Mexico became a Police State, and to pay for his ostentatious frivolities he played ducks and drakes with the nation’s property. To his pals he sold at peppercorn price one-fifth of all the land in Mexico. One lucky boy acquired seventeen million acres, and another twelve million.
‘The modern side of the picture is that he gave the cities modern drainage, drove broad avenues through their slums, created harbours that would take deep-sea ships, built railways and made the trains run on time. He played it skilfully with the Great Powers, too, by giving their industrialists concessions and exempting them from taxes; so that in his last eighteen years in office foreign investments here more than doubled.
‘But it was a grim time for the masses and in 1910 a chap named Madero started agitating against him. Tumultos followed all over the country. The most successful risings were led by the ex-bandit Pancho Villa and a peasant named Emiliano Zapata. Old Díaz was forced to resign and went into exile.
‘Madero succeeded him but he was an impractical idealist and did not last long. Naturally the Church and all the boys who had had such a good time under Díaz didn’t want their lands taken from them and given to the peasants; so they ganged up against him. Mexico City itself became a battleground, with both sides shelling it to pieces. The Whites got the upper hand and Madero was arrested. He resigned in exchange for a promise that his life would be spared; but a drunken old Indian General, Victoriano Huerta, betrayed him, had him shot and went over to the other side.
‘Believing that they were on to a good thing, his new pals made Huerta President; but he turned out to be a Mexican Nero, left the country to run itself and spent all his time as Master of Ceremonies at drunken orgies.
‘That was in 1913. For the next seven years Mexico was in a state of anarchy and there were ten Presidents, one of whom held the job for only forty-six minutes. Villa fought Carranza, Obregón fought Villa, González fought Zapata, Calles fought Maytorena, Obregón fought Carranza and Carranza fought Calles. The lawlessness and slaughter was appalling. Mexico’s then population of fifteen millions was reduced by a million dead.
‘At last Alvaro Obregón got the upper hand. It was he who was mainly responsible for the new Constitution of 1917; but the struggle between the peasants trying to get a fair deal and the rich attempting to hang on to what they’d got has never really ceased, only gone underground. Just like Mexico’s volcanoes, it erupts now and then, as in the Church-inspired rebellion of the Cristeros in 1926. So you can take it from me that after this long period of comparative quiet, as the majority of the people are still poverty-stricken, there may at any time be another eruption.’
For a moment Hunterscombe paused; then he concluded, ‘The reason I’ve bored you with all this is because I want to bring home to you that every one of these eruptions has resulted in years of civil war and desperate unhappiness for millions of people.’
When Hunterscombe ceased speaking, Adam remarked, ‘I give you full marks as our Cultural Attaché, for being well up in the history of this country; but it strikes me as a little strange that you should be so concerned about the political situation.’
The lanky Wing Commander’s bright-blue eyes held Adam’s with a steady stare, then he said in a low voice, ‘Look, pal. We are both Britishers so I can talk turkey to you. The job of Cultural Attaché sometimes covers a multitude of—well—other things. In my case, collecting info’ for a certain office not far from Whitehall. We get along pretty well with the present government here and, anyway, the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t. So it is up to us to help in any way we can to prevent another revolution in Mexico.’
After a moment he went on, ‘Not only on account of our interests here, but because we know what a revolution would lead to. Judging by the horrors that took place in the Spanish Civil War, the Spaniards have a pretty unpleasant reputation for cruelty and there is a lot of Spanish blood in this country. But the Spaniards are gentle little lambs compared to the Indians. The sort of parties that took place in the free-for-all that preceded 1920 are almost unbelievable. Captives had the soles of their feet sliced off and were made to run across open country until they were shot down. In one case, a sportsman who prided himself on his marksmanship had two hundred of them released just for target practice. Some were forced to dance for hours until their hearts gave out. Others were buried up to their necks then ridden over by cavalry. Others again were tied to horses’ tails and dragged at a gallop until they became bleeding pulp. Scores of prisoners had their ears lopped off and plantation foremen were nailed to the doors of-their homes, then left to die of thirst. We don’t want that sort of thing to happen again, do we?’.
‘My God, no!’ Adam gave a shudder. ‘But I don’t see how I can help to prevent it.’
‘Oh yes, you can,’ Hunterscombe replied quietly. ‘You are right in with old Enriquez, and the capitalists have plenty to gain if the reactionaries came to power. What is more, you are the lucky lad who has become the Señorita Chela’s latest boy-friend. We are convinced that she is in this thing up to the neck, and their contact is Alberuque. If you play it gently you are in a position to win her confidence and get the low-down on the tie-up between the Church and Bernadino and his pals. That is what I want you to do, then report to me every damn’ thing you can get out of her and her family so that we can turn it in to the Mexican government.’
Into Adam’s mind there flashed a vision of his beautiful Chela, arrested, being tried for treason and then condemned to spend the best years of her life in some awful prison.
Suddenly, seething with rage at the idea of being asked to betray her, he came to his feet and said icily, ‘Thanks for the lunch. But what is going to happen in Mexico is not my problem. As for spying on friends who have been extremely kind to me, I’ll see you in hell first.’
The Wing Commander appeared mildly amused by Adam’s outburst. He said, ‘Hold it, dear boy; hold it. Even if you haven’t the undiluted patriotism of a pukka sahib, I’d be grateful if you’d refrain from making a scene in my favourite restaurant.’
Feeling rather foolish, Adam subsided and Hunterscombe went on, ‘I accept your decision. All the same, you are wrong about it’s not being your problem. God knows there is enough trouble in the world today and each area that blows up lessens the stability of others. If you are not interested in the welfare of your own country, that is reason enough for refusing to help me protect British commercial interests in Mexico. But there is another side to it which is the problem of us all. That is to do everything we can to prevent wars and civil wars from breaking out, in which many thousands of innocent men, women and children die violent deaths or have their lives ruined by some ghastly wound. We’ll leave it at that, and I’ll only suggest that you think it over.’
‘I see your point,’ Adam agreed. ‘But I’m not going to involve my friends in trouble.’
Hunterscombe nodded. ‘That’s understandable. Now I’ll revert to my official position as Cultural Attaché. It’s part of my job to run the Anglo-Mexican Society. We meet once a week and get some visitor to give us a talk. He may be a visiting M.P., an economist, a man who has travelled a lot or a well-known sportsman. Authors, and particularly best-selling authors, are especially welcome. Can I persuade you to oblige?’
Adam had soon learned that he was not one of those fortunate people who can be interesting and amusing for three-quarters of an hour without first thinking out what he was going to say, making copious notes and rehearsing his speech; so it would mean
a full morning’s work. He had often done it when he needed the publicity. Now he didn’t; but, all the same, he felt it a duty to provide an evening’s entertainment for British people living abroad, so he replied:
‘Right ho! When is it to be?’
‘We meet on Tuesday evenings. I’ve got a chap for next week; an engineer who builds bridges. How about the following Tuesday?’
‘Fine. That’s all right by me.’
‘Thanks, chum. I’ll drop you a line about time and place. Now, if you will forgive me, I must get back to the Embassy. But I can give you a lift up town.’
Twenty minutes later they parted with no unfriendly feelings.
After his lunch with ‘our man’ in Mexico, Adam pondered the situation very seriously. For the under-cover agents of both America and Britain to have got on to it, there could be no doubt that real trouble was brewing. It being reasonable to suppose that the Mexican security people were not a pack of fools, it could be assumed that they had, too. Anyhow by now they would know about it as, short of abandoning his career as a diplomat, Ramón could not evade turning in his report.
Bernadino had said that he meant to warn his friends, which implied that the Enriquezes, father and son, still had time to pull out and put themselves in the clear. But Adam knew to be wrong Jeremy Hunterscombe’s assumption that Chela was acting as liaison between her family and Alberuque. Both parties might be involved in the conspiracy but, for some reason he could not fathom, on different levels. Bernadino had seen the red light; but even after reading the despatch that Ramón had been carrying, Alberuque had shown no uneasiness. That meant he and Chela would continue their subversive activities and would remain liable to be caught out.
Unholy Crusade Page 14
