"They're all pleasant. They can afford to be. You never met Ribbentrop and Otto Abetz, d.i.c.k. They were the most charming men in Europe before the war. But listen, last week in Havana I looked at a collection of pictures taken from the files of the chief of the Falange delegation for the Americas. There was one picture of a banquet held by the Falange in San Hermano late in 1936. It was a secret affair, only insiders and leaders. And there, on the dais, was Licenciado Enrique Gamburdo, big as life."

"Gamburdo!"

"Sure. It was a secret affair, all right. Not a word in the papers, and everyone present sworn to secrecy by a Bishop who was among the honored guests." Hall dried the sweat on his hands again. "But always at these affairs there's a man with a camera. Usually he's a Gestapo Heinie.

Sometimes he's a Gestapo Spaniard or even a Gestapo Latin-American. A picture, just one picture, has to be made. It goes to the German consul or the Falange chief of the country and they have to forward it to the Ibero-American Inst.i.tute in Berlin. The pictures back up the reports, you see, and, besides, when you have a picture of a deacon trucking with a doxie in a bordello it's a good thing to threaten to show the deacon's wife if the deacon decides to return to the paths of righteousness."

"But are you sure, Matt?"

"I'm a good reporter. My job is to remember unimportant things, and to remember them well when they become important. If I'm wrong, I'll find out for myself in San Hermano."

The Governor accepted one of Hall's cigars. "G.o.d," he said, "I hope you're wrong, Matt."

Later, back in his hotel room, Hall stripped to his shorts, ran cold water over his wrists and the back of his neck. He poured some Haitian rum into a gla.s.s, drenched it with soda from the pink-and-green night table.

Outside, in the darkness, four boys were playing tag. Hall listened to the whispered padding of their bare feet as they flew from cobblestones to trolley tracks. He went to the wrought-iron balcony, stood there watching the undersized kids chasing each other up and down the narrow street. Two freighters rode at anchor in the harbor, their gray noses pointing at the pink Customs House. A soldier lurched down the street, barely missing the feet of an old _jibaro_ sleeping in the doorway of a dark store.

Hall returned to the desk. He wrote a short note to a friend in a government bureau in Havana--merely to say that he was leaving for San Hermano and that for the time being could be reached in care of Pan American Airways there--and a similar note to Bird. He decided to let his other letters wait until he reached San Hermano.

The kids who were playing tag disappeared. The only noise which broke the silence of the night now was the soft pounding of the presses in the newspaper plant up the street. Hall sealed his letters and started to pack his bags.

The four boys reappeared with a whoop. They carried freshly printed magazines this time, and, as they ran down the street, first one then another took up the mournful cry: "_Puerto Rico Il.u.s.trado!

Il-us-traaa-dooohhh!_" They were no longer to be seen when Hall ran out to the balcony to look.

He took a cold shower, then lit one of his Havanas. The mosquito net which completely covered his bed annoyed him. He put out the light in order not to see the bars of the net frame. Silently, he railed against the sugar planters and their kept politicos for leaving the island prey to malaria. He had to remind himself that the net was his protection against malaria before he could crawl under the frame, but even then he climbed into bed with a cigar in his mouth.

The cigar was his protection, his secret weapon, against the claustrophobia the _mosquitero_ gave him. There were no cigars in Franco's prisons, no cigars and no cool sheets and coiled spring mattresses, no soft breezes floating in from a harbor as ancient as the Conquistadores.

He lay under the net, naked and uncovered, blowing smoke rings at the cross bars above him. He thought of Anibal Tabio in Geneva, thin as a reed, his slender hand pointing to the pile of German and Italian doc.u.ments del Vayo had brought to the League. He thought of Tabio and he thought of his three years in Spain and, thinking, he got worked up all over again.

It was not easy to think of the months of being trapped like an animal in a cage, of being pushed around by smirking men who had the guns, of watching the metal inkstand in the hands of the German major the second before it crashed into his own face. No, it was not easy, and the memory of San Sebastian led to the scarlet memory of the afternoon on the Malecon in Havana less than a month ago when Sanchez had pointed out to him two leaders of the Falange at a cafe table and he started out to bash their heads together right then and there. Luis and Felix had had to grab him and wrestle him to the sidewalk, laughing and playing at being just three jolly boys who'd had a drink too much instead of two Spanish Republicans keeping a frenzied American from killing two men they detested and would gladly have killed themselves.

Hall sat up, shaking, covered with sweat. He crawled out of bed, stood barefooted on the tiled floor. An overwhelming feeling of loneliness came over him. He was lonely in his person, lonelier still in his inability to make any of his own people understand the gnawing hates and fears which had taken him first to Havana and then to San Juan and now--_quien sabe_? And then, realizing with an amused start that he was thinking in Spanish, he tore the net off the bed, threw the cigar away, and went to sleep.

_Chapter two_

Dr. Varela Ansaldo was traveling with his a.s.sistant, a young Dr. Marina, an American nurse named Geraldine Olmstead, and a Dominican pa.s.sport.

This much Hall was able to observe at the ground station, before the pa.s.sengers for San Hermano and way points boarded the Stratoliner.

The Dominican pa.s.sport interested Hall. He knew that the pa.s.sports were for sale at an average price of a thousand dollars. Refugees starved and borrowed and sold their souls to sc.r.a.pe together a thousand dollars for one of the precious pa.s.sports. When you met a Spaniard with a new Dominican pa.s.sport, you seldom had to ask questions; you knew you were meeting a man whose life was not worth a nickel in Spain. And yet, in the day-old issue of _Time_ the Clipper had flown in from Miami, the biography of Ansaldo carried no hint of the doctor's being in disfavor with Franco. Nor did the biography mention the physician's Dominican citizenship.

Hall read the _Time_ biography again. _Scrupulously impartial during the Spanish Civil War, Ansaldo took no sides, remaining at his post as a healer under both nationalist and loyalist flags. With the end of war, Ansaldo accepted a Chair offered by the Penn Medical Inst.i.tute in Philadelphia, a.s.suming new position in October, 1939._ The story went on to describe some of the new operations Ansaldo had since performed.

Hall unbuckled his seat belt. He had a single seat on the left of the plane, the third seat from the front. Ansaldo's nurse had the seat in front of his. She sat across the aisle from Marina and Ansaldo, who shared a double seat. Hall sat opposite a pink-cheeked Dutchman of sixty who shared a seat with a very dark Brazilian. A State Department courier had the seat in front of the nurse. The other pa.s.sengers included the wife of an American Army officer, some Panair officials, two Standard Oil engineers, and some quiet Latin American government officials on their way back from Washington.

Most of the pa.s.sengers, now that the plane had gained alt.i.tude, were trying to sleep. The little Hollander was wide awake, virtuously and happily wide awake with the morning heartiness of a man who has been going to bed and rising early all of his life. He beamed at Hall. "I see you and I are the only ones who had a good night's sleep, Mr. Hall."

Then, laughing, he explained that he had recognized Hall from the picture on the jacket of his book before he had even heard his name announced by the steward on boarding ship. His accent was slight, but definite.

"Yesterday," he said, gesturing at Hall's seat, "Miss Prescott--a charming lady, by the way--and today another American writer. Ah, well, the d.a.m.n wheel turns and comes up twice with the same value. Oh, I forgot. My name is Wilhelm Androtten."

Hall extended his hand across the aisle, gripped the hand Androtten offered him. It was a pudgy little hand, soft and white and pink.

"Yes," Androtten sighed. "I have quite a h.e.l.l of a story of my own to tell about enemy actions. I too have been an actor in the drama. But of course I'm not a writer. Ah no, Mr. Hall," he waved a stiff little index finger back and forth in front of his glowing face, "I'm not going to suggest that you write my story. To me it is important as h.e.l.l. But to the world? It is not as dramatic as the sinking of the _Revenger_. A thousand times no!"

The Hollander pulled an immense old-fashioned silver cigarette case from the pocket of his brown-linen suit. "Have an American cigarette? Good.

Yes, mine is only the story of how the d.a.m.n j.a.panese Army drove a poor coffee planter off his estates and then out of Java. And that is all, sir, except that as you may have guessed--I was the planter. Now I am, so to speak, a real Flying Dutchman, flying everywhere to buy coffee from the other planters and then flying everywhere to sell it again. But I try to be jolly as h.e.l.l and to bear my load like a Dutchman should, Mr. Hall."

"That _is_ a story, Mr. Androtten," Hall said. "A real one." The strong light above the clouds rasped his sleep-hungry eyes. He put on his dark gla.s.ses, leaned his head back against the padded roll of the reclining chair.

"Do you really think my story is worth while, Mr. Hall? I would be honored as h.e.l.l to tell you the whole story with all the d.a.m.n facts, if you desire. I ... Are you getting off at Caracas?"

"No. I'm sorry. I go all the way through to San Hermano."

"Good, Mr. Hall. I go to San Hermano myself. Do you know the Monte Azul bean, sir? It's richer than the Java. A little Monte Azul, a little Bogota, some choice Brazilians--and you have a roast that will delight the rarest palates. Yes, San Hermano is my destination. San Hermano and the d.a.m.n Monte Azul bean."

Hall gave up trying to stifle a series of yawns. "I'm sorry," he said.

"I guess I didn't get enough sleep after all."

"Please sleep," Androtten said. "We'll have plenty of time to talk in San Hermano."

"Sure. Plenty of time." Hall opened the collar of his shirt, sank into a light sleep almost at once. He slept for over an hour, waking when the Standard Oil engineers in the rear seats laughed at a joke told by the Army officer's wife. The steady drone of the engines, the continuing sharpness of the light made remaining awake difficult. Hall closed his eyes again but there was no sleep.

Androtten and the Brazilian had found a common tongue, French, and in the joy of this discovery had also discovered a common subject. The Brazilian was holding forth on the exotic virtues of one rare coffee, the huge diamond on his finger ring catching and distributing the light as he gestured. Androtten was trying to describe the various blends of Java.

Hall thought of Ansaldo and Marina and the nurse. Marina was about thirty, too dapper, too fastidious, his plaid sports jacket fitting too snugly over his rounded hips. On boarding the plane, the nurse had brushed against his arm, which he withdrew with a subconscious gesture of revulsion. Hall watched him now, buffing his nails with a chamois board. Ansaldo had also awakened, was reading one of the pile of medical magazines he had carried into the plane. The nurse was a blank, so far.

All he could see of her was the soft roll of strawberry hair. She had a few faint freckles on her nose and full lips and it was ten to one that she was from the Midwest. But a blank.

The older doctor, Ansaldo, was about fifty, and had a stiff correctness that Hall had noticed immediately in the airport. He wore gla.s.ses whose horn rims were of an exaggerated thickness. His iron-gray hair, cut short and combed straight back, had an air of almost surgical neatness.

He had the long horse face of an El Greco Cardinal, and behaved even toward his a.s.sistant and his nurse with a detached politeness. Marina's obvious and fawning devotion to the older man seemed to bounce off Ansaldo without effect. Hall put him down as an extremely cold fish, but a cold fish who would bear watching for reasons Hall himself could not quite define.

When the plane stopped in Caracas for refueling, Ansaldo, carrying a thick medical journal with his finger still marking his place, took a slow walk in the shade, Marina following at his heels like a puppy. Hall got out and lit a cigar and when he noticed the nurse looking at the exhibit of rugs and dolls set up in a stand at the edge of the airfield he walked to her side. "Indian-craft stuff," he said. "If you'd care to, I'll be your interpreter."

The girl took off her dark gla.s.ses, looked at Hall for a moment, and then put them on again. "I can't see too well with these darn things,"

she laughed. "Do you think I could get a small rug without giving up my right arm?"

"Your right arm is safe with me around, Madam. Perhaps you never heard of me, Madam, but in these parts I'm known as Trader Hall. Matthew Hall."

"You're hired. My name is Jerry Olmstead."

They sauntered over to the stand. The afternoon sun ignited the fires in her hair. She was taller than most women, and though her white sharkskin suit was well creased from travel, Hall could see that she had the kind of full shapely figure which made poolroom loafers whistle and trusted bank employees forget the percentages against embezzlers. Feature for feature, Jerry Olmstead's was not the face that would have launched even a hundred ships. Her forehead was too high, and it bulged a bit. Her blue eyes were a shade too pale for the frank healthiness of her skin.

Her nose was straight and well shaped, but almost indelicately large.

When she smiled, she displayed two rows of glistening healthy teeth which were anything but even and yet not uneven enough to be termed crooked.

Hall helped her select a small rug, agreed at once to the price asked by the Indian woman at the stand, and then had a long discussion in Spanish with the peddler about the state of affairs at the airport before giving her the money. "You see," he said to Jerry, "unless you bargain with these Indians, you're bound to get robbed." The rug cost Jerry something like sixty cents in American money.