Caleb Carr - The Angel Of Darkness

Still nodding as Mr. Moore poured him yet another shot of brandy, Señor Linares said, “I can understand the difficulty. You, like the rest of your countrymen, believe what is in your newspapers. The Spanish Empire is a decadent collection of arrogant militarists, who would like nothing better than to prove their virility against whatever nation offends them. Well…” He took a smaller sip of brandy. “You are right, in part-but only in part.” Indicating the Doctor’s silver cigarette box, the señor said, “May I?” to which the Doctor, now very interested in what the man was saying, nodded. The señor lit up one of the number inside the box, drew on it, and let the smoke out with a look of satisfaction. “Very fine,” he said. “Russian?”

The Doctor nodded again. “Georgian. Blended with Virginia.”

The señor took another drag. “Yes. Very fine indeed… Tell me, Doctor. Have you ever heard of a cousin of mine-General Arsenio Linares?” The Doctor shook his head. “He commands at Santiago de Cuba. Or of Admiral Pascual Cervera y Topete, commander of our naval squadron at Cádiz?” Again the Doctor came up blank. “I did not think so. But you know-you all know-of the ‘butcher’ General Weyler, and of the belligerent clique of monarchists and military officers that surround the queen regent… They are the men who are quoted in your newspapers. Your Mr. Hearst and Mr. Pulitzer-they will not sell their product by printing voices of reason.”

“Reason?” the Doctor asked, looking puzzled.

The señor gave him a tough, straight look. “You don’t really suppose, Doctor, that we are all so blind as to be unable to recognize the reality which surrounds us? Yes, there are many Spaniards in Cuba, and in Spain, and even in my boyhood home of the Philippines, who believe that your country has meddled in our affairs and insulted our leaders past the point of toleration. And they are right. But they wish to resolve the matter through war-they wish it almost as much as do many Americans. There are those in our country, however, who know what the inevitable result of such a war would be. The men I have mentioned, for example, know. And I know.”

“Would you mind telling us ?” Mr. Moore said.

Señor Linares looked over at him and chuckled. “This country… it is like a youth who has suddenly grown into manhood, and does not yet realize the extent of his own strength. If Spain goes to war with your country, señor, the result will be disastrous for our empire. We will lose what little we still possess in this hemisphere, and probably a great deal more. But such arguments are lost on those who wish to defend our pride with arms. They pay no attention to the warnings of experienced officers like my cousin, or Admiral Cervera, who know how great our weakness is. Nor do they listen to mere consular secretaries, who have seen your great ships under construction in Brooklyn, in Newport, and in Virginia.” Staring into his glass, Señor Linares seemed to grow bitterly downcast. “They do not listen.”

The Doctor’s eyes had gone wide. “Are you saying,” he asked quietly, “that you deliberately tried to suppress knowledge of your daughter’s abduction in order to keep political extremists in your country from obtaining further rationalizations for declaring war on the United States?”

Looking not at all ashamed of it, the señor answered, “What would you have done, Doctor? The Spanish Empire is sick-dying of its own arrogance, which seeks any excuse to be unleashed. I know this. Yet at the same time, I was raised to be a part of that empire. My family has served it for three hundred years. I must do all that I can to hold off the final destruction.”

“Including letting your own daughter quite possibly die?” Miss Howard said.

Señor Linares didn’t look at her as he answered. “Spain needs sons-not daughters. The cost had to be weighed against the return, as you Americans say.”

“So now,” Marcus went on for him, “you’re just trying to make sure that they won’t resurface somewhere. You want to be certain the matter is really ended.”

The señor shrugged. “I should like an annulment from my wife, if she will not return to me. I shall marry again. As I say, Spain needs sons.”

Suddenly standing up, his eyes burning, the Doctor said, “I have told you that we know nothing of the whereabouts of your family, Señor Linares. That is the truth. And now I must ask that you leave my house.”

The señor didn’t look like the fairly rude order came as much of a surprise: he got up, leaning on his stick, then nodded and walked into the hall.

“Señor,” Miss Howard called after him. The man stopped at the top of the staircase and turned. “If a man can place a greater priority on his country than his own child-and if his country not only tolerates but encourages such a choice-then hasn’t that country already been destroyed?”

“In the months to come,” Señor Linares answered quietly, “I suspect that we shall learn the answer to that question.”

Stepping quickly, almost lightly, the señor made his way out of the house and back to his carriage, leaving the rest of us to sit quietly and think over this, the last missing piece in the case of Libby Hatch.

Of course, war between the United States and the Empire of Spain did come, just months after we sat in the Doctor’s parlor with Señor Linares; and in spite of what a lot of people seem to’ve taken to believing since, what the señor had called Spanish “arrogance” was just as responsible for the bloodbath as were all the rantings and ravings of those Americans what favored the idea. Señor Linares’s predictions about the outcome of the thing proved just as accurate as his ideas about its causes: the Spanish Empire was pretty well destroyed, and the United States found itself in possession of a whole string of new foreign possessions-including the Philippine Islands. I don’t guess that much of anybody, even in Washington, had a really sound idea of what they were getting themselves into by taking over such places: as Mr. Finley P. Dunne, the newspaper wag, wrote at the time, most Americans couldn’t have told you whether the Philippines “were islands or canned goods” before the war. As for me, I had only one thought-a question, really-when I heard that we were the new rulers of the place: Had El Niño returned to his homeland before we invaded, and had he then become part of the native army what quickly began to fight against our country for independence? I never found out; but it would’ve been like him.

The detective sergeants returned to their regular duties at the Police Department after they’d finished their investigation of the Doctor’s Institute, but their position there remained as troubled as it’d always been. Over the years there’ve been commissions what’ve investigated corruption in the department-in fact, it sometimes seems like there’s always a commission investigating said corruption-and Marcus and Lucius have given testimony before all of them, in an attempt to get at least the Bureau of Detectives cleaned up. But the only real result of their efforts has been to isolate them even more from their “peers,” and I’m sure that, if it wasn’t for the brilliance what they’ve demonstrated on so many cases, they would’ve gotten the axe a long time ago. But they keep on going, squabbling, experimenting, and generally trying to use forensic science to push police work forward; and many’s the thief, killer, rapist, and mad bomber what wishes that the Irish brass’d been able to get rid of the “Jew boys” a long time ago.

Miss Howard kept her operation at Number 808 Broadway going after the Hatch case; in fact, she and it are still going, though she eventually expanded its services so that both men and women could gain the benefit of her skills. Over time she’s gotten to be kind of a legend in the detection world, a fact what makes her very proud, though she’d never admit as much. And, despite all her talk about men’s defects, she’s actually taken the time to get herself mixed up with one or two of them along the way, though it’s not for me to reveal the details of those experiences. What I can say is that she remains the most singular woman I’ve ever come across, always displaying a combination of deep friendship and independence what many members of her sex are as incapable of achieving today as Libby Hatch was twenty-two years ago. I guess that this situation exists, as Miss Howard has always maintained, because of all the guff that women are fed as young girls-and maybe the solution is for more females to carry guns, I don’t know: Miss Howard’s certainly put quite a few more bullets into men’s legs over the years, and it’s only helped her stay her own person.