The Captain and the Enemy (12 page)

‘The orders of Colonel Martínez.’

‘Who is this Colonel Martínez?’

‘My boss.’ He used the English word.

‘But why? Am I in some danger?’

‘Señor Smith,’ he said, ‘has a number of enemies.’

‘Why? What is he up to?’

‘That you must ask him when he returns.’

But many days were to pass before then. To escape boredom I asked Pablo not only to guard me – from what? – but to show me his city. It was a city of steep hills and torrential rainstorms which lasted for less than a quarter of an hour and yet made miniature Niagaras down the streets, leaving cars stranded. It was also a city of slums as Mr Quigly had mentioned to me, not only of
banks
. In the quarter which was called ironically Hollywood it was a shocking contrast to see the tumbledown shacks on which the vultures lodged and in which whole families were crowded together in the intimacy of complete poverty only a few hundred yards from the banks, where the high windows glittered in the morning sun, and it was even more of a shock to gaze into the American Zone across the mere width of a street, and see the well-kept lawns and the expensive villas on which no vulture ever cared to settle. On our side of the road which was called the Street of the Martyrs, and had been named, Pablo told me, after some old conflict between American Marines and students, it seemed I was subject to Panamanian law, while on the other side I would be in the American Zone and I could be hauled away there for any infringement of the American law and tried in New Orleans. More and more I wondered what had induced the Captain to settle in this city, for there were no signs of any gold outside the coffers of the international banks and I doubted his capacity to break a bank.

One day Pablo took me for a drive the whole length of the immaculate green Zone. I felt all the more astonished that such riches could exist in sight of such poverty without any customs officer or frontier guard to keep the inhabitants of Hollywood from breaking in. I forget what words I used to express my amazement, but I remember Pablo’s reply. ‘This is not only Panama. This is Central America. Perhaps one day …’ He patted the holster at his side. ‘One needs better weapons than a revolver, you understand, to change things.’

Sharing meals with my guardian I came to know and like him more and more, and as my liking grew I found
that
we could wander in our talk beyond the tidy zone of discretion. I could tell how well he knew the Captain, for it had been his job to guard him just as he now guarded me. It was the unknown Colonel Martínez who had given him his orders. He referred to the Captain always as Señor Smith and I adopted the name.

As we were driving through the American Zone to see a little of the more rural Panama which existed on the other side of this non-existent frontier I asked him abruptly, ‘Who are Señor Smith’s enemies?’, and his reply was a silent one – a wave of his hand towards the golf house and a putting green and a group of officers in immaculate American uniforms, watching the players. He wouldn’t enlarge on his gesture, as though he considered that he was betraying nothing of his employer’s secrets so long as he didn’t employ any spoken term.

Every day he remained with me till bedtime and I never discovered where it was he spent the nights. Certainly not outside my door, for I had looked out there. Perhaps he trusted me not to take to the streets after I said goodnight since he had warned me that they were not safe after dark. ‘Not so bad here as in New York,’ he told me, ‘but bad, very bad all the same. What can you expect where people are so poor?’ There were the makings of a real revolutionary in Pablo, I thought, given the right leader.

Mr Quigly remained much more of a mystery to me. I could feel an antagonism between him and Pablo and I instinctively sided with Pablo. At least he carried his weapon unconcealed, but I doubted whether Mr Quigly in his tight North American clothes could have found room for that kind of a weapon. I wondered why the Captain had arranged for Mr Quigly to meet me – perhaps
it
was because his language was English and the Captain, who had been my teacher, knew how weak my Spanish was. Mr Quigly would call on me regularly around eight-thirty in the morning, if only to speak to me about nothing in particular, usually on the telephone in the hall below. The first time he had explained the early hour by saying that he was on his way to his office, which was not far from the hotel. This gave me the chance of asking him what he did. A small hesitation was conveyed up the line. ‘I am a counsellor,’ he replied.

‘A counsellor?’

‘A financial counsellor.’

I thought immediately of the Captain’s mule trains and I asked, ‘Do you deal in gold?’

‘There is no gold in Panama,’ he replied. He added, ‘There never was any gold. That was a legend. The gold came from elsewhere.’

Our brief conversations always concluded with his question whether I had any news yet of Mr Smith’s return, but I had none to give.

As my friendship with Pablo grew, I ventured a question or two on the subject of Mr Quigly. ‘I don’t understand him. He’s not the sort of person I would expect my father to trust.’ (I had accepted the story that Mr Smith was my father since I found the relationship was assumed by both Mr Quigly and Pablo. My passport, of course, bore the name of Baxter, but they probably imagined that my mother had married twice.)

‘Señor Smith does not trust him very much I think,’ Pablo replied.

‘Then why did he ask Mr Quigly to meet me at the airport?’

Pablo had no solution to that problem.

About a week after my arrival Mr Quigly unexpectedly invited me to dinner. That night he was a changed Mr Quigly, and not only in mood. He was almost physically changed for he was now wearing a jacket with padded shoulders which made him look flatter but less narrow, and his trousers seemed less tight. He made an obscure joke which I didn’t understand, though he laughed or rather giggled at it himself. His friendship with the Captain became to me even more inexplicable.

He told me, ‘I am taking you to a Peruvian restaurant. The Pisco Sours are excellent there.’

‘Is Pablo not coming with us?’

‘I have told him that I will be your bodyguard this evening. I have promised not to let you out of my sight.’

‘What about Colonel Martínez?’

‘I gave Pablo a little tip just for once and he agreed to forget the Colonel. A tip goes a long way in Panama, even in some very high circles.

‘Do you too carry a gun?’

‘No no. In my case there is no danger. They consider me an honorary Yankee, and no one, at this moment especially, would want any harm to come to a Yankee.’

I had never drunk a Pisco Sour before and when we had each drunk three I felt quite clearly the effect they had. Even Mr Quigly became almost jovial.

‘No news from your good and errant father?’ he asked.

The Pisco Sours had confused me. ‘Oh, the Devil never writes,’ I told him.

‘I wouldn’t have gone so far,’ Mr Quigly said, after what seemed a calculated consideration, ‘as to call him exactly a devil. A little mischievous sometimes perhaps.’

I thought it best not to explain the misunderstanding. ‘Oh, devil is just a joke in the family,’ I explained.

‘I get on very well with him, but of course I can’t share all his ideas.’

‘Can one say that of anyone?’

He evaded my question. ‘Perhaps another Pisco Sour?’

‘Will it be wise?’

‘One can’t always be wise, can one, in a world like this?’

That night I found myself as near as I ever came to liking Mr Quigly. He seemed to grow less narrow in face and body with every Pisco Sour I took.

‘Do you plan a long visit?’ was the most direct question which Mr Quigly put to me and by that time we had abandoned the Pisco Sours and were deep into a bottle of Chilean wine. In the short intervals between our drinks he had spoken a little like a hired guide, recommending me to visit the Cocos Islands with their Indian inhabitants, who wore gold – gold? – earrings, and the Washington Hotel in the American Zone of Colón where he could vouch for the rum punches which were not reliable on the Pacific side of Panama. And then he told me that in the north there was a charming little resort in the mountains if I wished to take a weekend away (‘I could arrange you special terms’) and, how was it, he demanded, that he had nearly failed to mention one of the rarest attractions of Panama, the golden frogs which could be seen in a place the name of which I have forgotten quite a short ride on the other side of the American Zone. His conversation became more and more like a handbook for a tourist, a description of myself which I resented.

‘But I don’t regard this as a holiday,’ I said. ‘I am hoping to find a job.’

‘Perhaps with Mr Smith?’

‘Perhaps with Mr Smith,’ and I quickly corrected myself, ‘with my father.’

‘I’ve never quite made out what your father does, but he seems to have good relations with the National Guard. Judging by Colonel Martínez giving you your own bodyguard.’

Mr Quigly changed the subject back to the tourist handbook and he spoke of an island called Toboso which was well worth a visit, where no cars were permitted and there was a long forgotten cemetery of Anglo-Saxons buried somewhere in the jungle. Only when we had finished the wine did he become personal again. He told me, ‘I work here for an American paper. As a financial consultant. Panama is very useful as a centre of news for the whole Central American scene – there’s a lot happening these days – in Nicaragua, Guatemala, El Salvador, a great deal of trouble everywhere. The way things are going my paper is glad to have a correspondent who is not strictly American. Luckily I have a British passport, though I left England when I was sixteen. Americans are not very popular in these parts because of the Zone. Mr Smith told me that you too have been in journalism.’

‘I had a job on a very local paper,’ I said, ‘and I walked out without notice.’

‘So they won’t take you back, I suppose? A bit of a gamble, wasn’t it, joining your father?’

The wine was making me confidential. Perhaps, I thought, I have been a bit unfair to Mr Quigly. ‘Judging
from
his letters there’s a lot of money to be made here. Of course he has always been a bit of an optimist.’ I added carelessly, ‘So long as I’ve known him.’

‘Since you were a baby in fact?’ Mr Quigly commented with the first hint of humour he had ever shown.

I decided after all to be truthful – perhaps that was the way the wine worked too. ‘He isn’t my real father,’ I admitted, ‘he’s a kind of adopted one.’

‘That is most interesting,’ Mr Quigly replied, though I could not see what interest my bit of family history could possibly have for him. Perhaps he read a question in my eyes, for he added, ‘At least with an adopted father like that you won’t have to worry about the very unjust statement in what I like to call the Unholy Bible – “The sins of the fathers are visited on the children.”’ He giggled at the last drop which remained in his glass of Chilean wine. It was as though he had at last found an opportunity to use a joke which he had been keeping a long time in store, and I think he was disappointed by my failure to laugh. ‘Perhaps,’ he said, ‘we could use another bottle of this Chilean brew.’

‘Not for me. I’ve had all I can take.’

‘Ah, a wise man. I think perhaps you are right, though all the same …’

This seemed a moment when I too could take advantage of the wine to extract a little information. ‘I’ve wondered,’ I said, ‘why my father – let’s call him that – asked you to meet me.’

His answer was what I had expected when I talked to Pablo. ‘He thought your Spanish might not be good enough to cope with the bodyguard. You see with my journalistic contacts I’ve been able to help him now and
then
. He’s had his difficulties too, though not linguistic ones.’

I remembered how the Captain had warned Liza against taking the easier and less expensive route to Panama via New York.

‘With the Americans?’

‘Oh, and others too. As I told you, I don’t know exactly what business he is in.’

‘He has an expensive room at any rate.’

‘You can’t judge by that. There are activities here where it pays well to look expensive in the short term. I do sincerely hope you will find he can find a place of work for you which you will find suitable. And rewarding. To be rewarding after all is the greatest thing.’

Mr Quigly looked at his watch and said with his usual precision: ‘Ten seventeen.’ Then he called for the waiter and asked for the bill, which he signed after a careful study of the figures. He even questioned the number of Pisco Sours. ‘On expenses,’ he told me and giggled again. ‘Before we say goodnight,’ he added, ‘I would like to say how much I’ve enjoyed your company. A fellow Englishman. One does feel sometimes in these parts a little lonely. It’s good to hear one’s own tongue spoken.’

‘Surely you have plenty of Americans close by in the Zone.’

‘Yes, yes, but it’s not quite the same, is it? I do want to tell you – it’s not only the Chilean wine that speaks – if you have any difficulty in finding a job I might be able to help a little. Or if you need a bit of supplementary work. With me a story sometimes breaks suddenly, and I can’t always be on the spot. I could do with an assistant. What I believe in the newspaper world you come from they call a
stringer
. Half time, half time at most. Of course I don’t want to interfere with any arrangements Mr Smith may have made for you.’

At the door of the hotel he told me, ‘You have my telephone number. Just get in touch with me at any time,’ and something in the tone of his voice made me feel that he was disclosing at last the whole object of our evening together. But he need not have expended so many Pisco Sours in the course of it. I was only too well aware that I might need help when the Captain learnt that Liza was dead.

(2)

Two evenings later, when I was tired of walking the streets of Panama with Pablo and passing a dozen or more banks out of the hundred and twenty-three (I had no desire to return to the slums of Hollywood where we had been pursued by an addict wishing to sell us drugs for dollars), my bodyguard left me in my room, but he returned a moment later with the news that Mr Smith had arrived, that he would be at the hotel in half an hour, and that his guardianship was over. ‘Señor Smith can look after you now. Colonel Martínez has withdrawn me.’