The Three Sentinels (16 page)

‘Policemen and doctors cannot be argued with,’ Dr. Solano remarked. ‘When we say it’s an emergency, it is.’

‘González does nothing but knows everything,’ the Mayor grumbled.

‘Except his own men,’ Solano added.

Mat gave him a quick glance. It was plain that Luis Solano knew the reason why the women bolted in secret from the shacks and had kept silent, common sense backing up the Hippocratic oath. His
brown eyes were calm and non-committal as usual, but there was a thin smile under the moustache. Curious that so many Latin-American doctors should grow moustaches! Perhaps it was as far as they
dared to move from the dignified medical beards of their fathers; perhaps a moustache helped to stiffen an upper lip too sensitive to pity.

‘Why don’t you both come up the hill and dine with me?’ Mat asked.

‘Now that would delight me. Your society and the cooking of Amelia!’ the Mayor exclaimed. ‘But papers await my signature. My evening is not my own. For me the office, the
marital couch and in the morning back to work!’

It was the marital couch which mattered and all Cabo Desierto knew it, though no one would have punctured the mayoral myth of pressure of business. The dear, old boy, conforming to the tradition
of comic opera, had been caught with his pants down—literally, it was said—in the back room of his wife’s pretty dressmaker. Thereafter if he did not go straight home he was
accused with formidable ululations of making a fool of himself again. The Mayoress would have telephoned Amelia to see if he were really at Don Mateo’s house—an unbearable humiliation
for the elected head of the community.

Mat and Luis Solano stayed with him until the lights came on in the plaza, listened for a full ten minutes to his reluctant good-byes and drove up to the General Manager’s house where Mat
suggested that they should wait in the garden.

‘I did not warn Amelia and, since it’s you, she’ll insist on at least an hour’s cooking.’

‘This is magnificent,’ Solano said, standing at the west window.

A full moon revealed Mat’s imagined world curve more desolately than the sun, and a breeze off the sea carried faint and continuous moaning of surf as if the spinning of the earth were
audible.

‘Yes, but it makes me feel alone in space.’

‘You don’t like that?’

‘Too near reality. It’s a pity about the Mayor.’

‘He’s so ashamed of himself that he can’t see he has doubled his popularity.’

‘Natural enough if he hasn’t any peace at home!’

‘It will wear off. It’s only that she is feeling like your space traveller—and noise is the remedy.’

Pepe with a lamp and bottles led them down through the terraces to the pool and announced before retiring that dinner would be in half an hour which it certainly would not.

‘So you knew why the women set off on their march?’ Mat asked.

‘Yes. But I was not sure that you did.’

‘I have wondered whether to tell Garay. It was the State which sent those blasted police.’

‘But it was the Company which delayed returning the men. Let it stay at that and don’t complicate things! You must never allow Garay to feel like a cornered animal.’

Darkness outside the ring of light was absolute. The land, dense and comfortable under its green growth, silenced the Pacific and shut off the moon.

‘You weren’t afraid at first to be alone here?’ the doctor asked.

‘No, Luis. In a sense I had come home.’

‘The best move you ever made was to dismiss the police guard. It lowered the temperature.’

‘I had nothing to lose. It wasn’t the same for others with wives and children. They felt that police were better than darkness. Jane Thorpe warned me.’

‘They have never quite forgiven you. I don’t want to tell you the latest libel, but you ought to know it.’

‘I do know it. The bronze boy and all that.’

‘Bronze?’

‘Anything but black iron or pale stone. I could have found his colour among my timbers once.’

‘Mateo, you had a happy childhood.’

‘I did—after my father and I were left alone.’

‘Your mother died young?’

‘No. Gave us hell and then cleared out.’

‘So that is why you never married!’

‘Is it? That’s never occurred to me. There was always a new job. Or war. Or something. I don’t know where my life has gone. But I’ve enjoyed myself. Would you believe
that I have never taken a sleeping pill or a tranquilliser?’

‘That’s only because you use alcohol very skilfully. What about women?’

‘I have always been able to give satisfaction.’

‘To give?’

‘That’s more than half the fun of it.’

‘You must have created a good deal of unhappiness, Mateo.’

‘Why?’

‘Haven’t women loved you?’

‘I suppose so. Perhaps I never stopped long enough to find out. They get desperate so easily.’

‘I think you want to give but only on condition that you are not possessed.’

‘Christ, no! I possess myself. Stop trying to analyse me and drink up, Luis! You’re here to sew the bits back on to casualties.’

‘And also to give advice when I know the facts.’

‘Well?’

‘I recommend an affair with Pilar.’

‘Pilar. I’m not going to be run by Pilar!’

‘She might want to give, too. You aren’t the only one.’

‘Bloody charity! I’ll be sixty before I know it.’

‘With nothing.’

‘With the devil of a lot, my lad, if I can get the Three Sentinels flowing.’

‘I didn’t mean money.’

‘Nor did I. Don’t you count memories, Luis?’

‘Yes, if you have somebody of your own to tell them to.’

‘If I didn’t know Pilar would rather die first, I’d say she had put you up to this.’

‘You don’t realise how fond of you we are, Mateo. About half the town has put me up to this.’

What islands we all were! A man saw only the merest outline of the picture his society made of him. Mat knew that he was liked, yes, but not to such an extent that Cabo Desierto would lovingly
plan for his private future like a bevy of retired midwives. Warmth flowed round him; it was embarrassing and could affect his judgment. And a lot of nonsense that was I His judgment had been
affected by warmth, his own and theirs, since he landed on the quay.

‘Let’s go up and bully Amelia,’ he suggested. ‘She’s always flattered by a head poking round the kitchen door even when she wants to throw something at
it.’

The evening spread out in a lake of restfulness. Amelia surpassed herself. Luis Solano laid off the personal questions and entertained him with stories of his compatriots and their initial
distrust of foreign doctors—which turned quickly to such exaggerated confidence that they preferred to be treated at the Company’s miniature hospital and refused to be flown to the
Capital unless Solano protested his absolute ignorance.

He thought that typically British, but Mat was sure he was wrong. It was just another example of the isolation of Cabo Desierto, always on the defensive and proud of itself. Luis was a fearless
and admirable general practitioner, but that was not the point. He belonged to them. He, too, was a prisoner between the ocean and the Andes.

Next morning Mat had some difficulty in meeting those aristocratic eyes of Pilar, but was in genial form for González who came up to headquarters to report on his journey to the Capital.
The Captain was unusually straightforward. For once he had been given definite instructions and was sure of powerful backing. He had seen his contact in the Union and delivered Mat’s
ultimatum that the explosives must be removed. It was accepted—with some relief, González thought—but there were still difficulties. The cache was on the old field and only two
people knew exactly where: Lorenzo and the expert who was to undertake the demolition of the Charca’s gates.

‘Did they know Lorenzo has disappeared?’

‘No. I reported it to Police Headquarters as a matter of routine of no special importance. A piece of paper filed away until I add to the dossier.’

‘Since you left I have it from a reliable source that Lorenzo somehow misunderstood instructions and could not find the right place.’

‘It does not matter. They will send the man who hid the explosives to collect them. All he needs is a truck.’

‘How will he come?’

‘By fishing boat. That’s how he brought them in.’

‘Where did they get this fellow from?’

‘They did not tell me and I could not ask too many questions. But there is a discreet surveillance of visitors to the Union office, and I felt sure I could identify him from the
files.’

González pulled out his notebook.

‘Here, Don Mateo, we have him without any ifs or perhapses. Inocencio Velez Garcia. Age 41. Born Barcelona. Anarchist and
dinamitero.
Republican refugee. Employed during the war
by British agents in Valparaiso. Believed to have been secretly trained by them. In hospital 1949 for extraction of three machine pistol bullets. Claimed he had no enemies and must have been
mistaken for someone else. Communist agents suspected. 1952 arrested for bank robbery. Unshakeable alibi and case dismissed. Witnesses bought by funds of unknown origin. Present employment: watch
repairer. Known in his own circles as El Vicario.’

‘Sounds as if he gave good value for money,’ Mat said. ‘Why should he agree to come and collect the stuff? If police want a chat with him they have only to catch him
unloading.’

‘The property of the Union, not his.’

‘And they are above the law?’

‘Provided they have a good enough story. Besides that, Don Mateo, I have assured them in your name that we do not want to know how their property got there or what it was for.’

All satisfactory so far as it went. Mat was thankful that he had persuaded Rafael Garay to post the guard on the Charca. That was checkmate if there were any attempt at a double-cross by the
Union or their expert from Barcelona.

Nowhere else, however, was there any simplicity. The foreground of the picture was unfinished, blank as the face of the Cordillera. He had little doubt that Lorenzo had been murdered. The Union
was the likely culprit. On the other hand González was sure they knew nothing, and he was not easily fooled. Yet Lorenzo’s disappearance must somehow be connected with the
explosives.

‘What’s your plan when the fishing boat arrives?’ he asked González. ‘I’ve been the hell of a lot of things, but never a gun-runner in or out.’

‘We should not show ourselves at all. The Company and the police must not be involved. When the boxes are safely on board I will check the contents and get the boat away
immediately.’

‘I think we should promise Inocencio something in cash over and above the Union rate for the job. Have you any idea how much of it there is?’

‘A hundred and fifty kilos, they said—plus his own refinements.’

‘Refinements. Yes. Your watch repairer would have been safely away by the time that little lot went up.’

‘Can your reliable source help us any more?’

‘No,’ Mat replied rather too bluntly.

‘It is true that at that age the more one interrogates the less sense one gets.’

Mat was amused by the acute and accurate guess, but did not comment on it. Police captains, in his experience, could never resist showing off their cunning once they had been admitted to
intimacy.

‘Do you think it safe to question Delgado?’ he asked. ‘He genuinely wants peace.’

‘He wants his chance and has got it.’

‘You don’t approve?’

‘Me? I am a shadow, Don Mateo, careful to whose feet I attach myself. There are men such as yourself and Garay who do not seek power but have it. There are politicians like Delgado who
want it for its own sake. He is a crook and in your hands.’

‘A good reason for telling the truth?’

‘In my business, none better.’

It was always a relief to be able to talk openly with Gil Delgado. Daily he paced in and out of headquarters, belly swinging, ready to be ingratiating with anyone but Gateson. Mat agreed with
González’s reading of him. His game was to emerge as the leader who had brought peace and so to become the unchallengeable representative of the Cabo Desierto workers. That could well
lead to a position of national importance; in Delgado there was another Dave Gunner on the way up. He was quite ruthless enough to deal with Lorenzo without any sense of guilt, but it was hard to
see how that uniformed dummy could ever have been an obstacle to his plans.

Mat received him in the conference room rather than his office, emphasizing that they talked as equal to equal with a common interest. He had noticed that the padded chairs and polished table
had an excellent effect on Delgado who already felt himself the politician among lawyers and engineers. Sherry of course improved his manners, but not so much as the decanter and cut glasses. And
very rightly!

In the event of a clash what arms had Rafael Garay? Very few, Delgado replied, but no one should underrate iron bars and knives. Explosives? Yes, a few dozen sticks of dynamite and some
detonators, but no plans for using them beyond poking them into scraps of pipe. Had Rafael any secret stock? None at all, Delgado answered positively; he would have known about it.

‘Rafael will never attack his comrades or you, Don Mateo, provided we go slow. But give him an excuse to fight and he will take it.’

That was good advice and sincere. In the easy atmosphere Mat risked the direct question.

‘Have you any idea what could have happened to Lorenzo, Don Gil?’

‘I suspect that he knew too much for his health. He was always with Birenfield—the pair of them in enough mud to drown a cat.’

‘It could be Garay?’

‘Not for a moment! Rafael is a Quixote. Violent, yes, but more Christian than the Christians.’

‘All the same, rumour has it that he fired those two shots at Birenfield.’

‘He did, but not to kill.’

‘And you still think I can get the men back to work without bloodshed?’

‘Of course! They’ll get tired of it, man. All this for some women and children, which was only an accident!’

So that was now Delgado’s attitude! To Mat the Company’s cheating of their men was still unforgiveable; to refrain from saying what he thought had needed more self-control than any
of his guarded moves to undo the damage. Humanity—one despaired of it! Delgado’s ‘only an accident’ was as damnable as Dave Gunner’s ‘only foreigners’.
Garay and his party were utterly wrong-headed, and it was not at all more Christian than Christians to allow resentment and vengeance to overcome common sense; but for themselves there was nothing
to be gained except a poor living off the land. That was to be respected.