John Brunner - The Squares of the City

“What sort of move?” demanded Angers.

“You doubtless recall the fine that was imposed on Juan Tezol? So far it has gone unpaid, aside from a couple of hundred dolaros scraped together by fanatical supporters of the party. But the twenty days’ grace before the reckoning are up today, and many people have been wondering whether Tezol is indeed valuable enough to those behind the party for the money to be forthcoming.”

Angers nodded. “You have a point. If the fellow doesn’t get ransomed, it means his usefulness is at an end—because he and Francis were so closely linked, one assumes. Some of Francis’s dirt must have rubbed off on Tezol, then.”

“Of the two, Tezol is probably in fact the dirtier if not the darker,” said Lucas reflectively, and gave a faint smile. “Yes, it will be interesting to see if those thousand dolaros materialize.”

Angers was deep in thought for a moment. At length he said, “You seem very ready to accept that Dalban is at the bottom of this, by the way. Has he in fact any influence with Tiempo? I always understood that Maria Posador was behind it.”

Lucas shrugged. “To my way of thinking, Maria Posador is also a—a what is it called? A decoy, precisely. I think that her acceptance of Vados’s invitation to return to Aguazul greatly diminished her influence. Now it is always Dalban that I watch.”

He checked the time and started to get up. “You will excuse me; I have spent too long talking. Rest assured, Senor Hakluyt—this affair of yours will quickly be regulated.”

He acted remarkably promptly. On my breakfast tray at the hotel the following morning was an envelope containing two items: the first, a certified copy of an injunction issued by Judge Romero with, pinned to it, a slip of paper saying, “With compliments from Andres Lucas.” And the second, the morning’s issue of Tiempo.

Today the most conspicuous item on the front page was a yawning gap, bearing a facsimile of the official censor’s stamp and a note to the effect that this section of the paper had originally contained material which contravened such-and-such a subsection of the Public Order Act.

This was more like it. As I found later, police had descended on the Tiempo office early this morning, acting on Judge Romero’s instructions, and had removed another article about me from the actual stone on which it was set up.

Looking through the rest of the paper, I discovered that Romero had had a busy day yesterday. Tezol, his fine unpaid, had been arrested on Romero’s order last night and was now in jail, without Dalban or his associates—who were supposed to be backing the National Party—lifting a finger to help him.

The Nationals seemed capable of some really bloody things on occasion. I had no doubt that so long as this illiterate peasant orator had been useful to them, they were only too happy to have him trust them; when it came to a pinch, they’d dropped him without a word.

I turned to the inside pages and there found an example of the Mendoza brothers’ cleverness, of which Lucas had spoken yesterday. Felipe Mendoza was at it again, hammering his well-worn theme of bribery in the treasury department and vested interests in highway corporations. Owing, I presumed, to the injunction Seixas had previously obtained against the paper, he wasn’t mentioned by name; nonetheless, all the “for examples” given in the article would have fitted him like a glove, down to the jug of sickly cocktail he kept on the desk in his office. This gave me cause to frown. So having an injunction against the Mendozas wasn’t as watertight as I had hoped. I’d have to go on watching for trouble in this quarter.

Well, there was hope in another direction. Lucas had spoken of investigations into Dalban’s part in the affair; if they paid off, I might be able to get on with my job in peace. Frankly, by this time I was wishing to God it was over and done with.

I made a mental note to call Lucas and thank him as soon as I got the chance, and finished my breakfast in a considerably better mood than I’d been in twenty-four hours before.

Sitting in the lounge with an air of extreme dejection, studying a chess problem and idly moving a pawn back and forth as though unable to decide what to do with it, was Maria Posador.

What the hell did she do at this hotel when she had a house a little distance away? Did she just like it? Come here for the company? Use it as an office for whatever she did with the National Party?

I went over to her. “Senora Posador! I’d like a word with you.”

“You are welcome, Senor Hakluyt,” she murmured without looking up. “Be seated.” She gestured at another chair, an unlit Russian cigarette between her fingers.

I sat down and leaned forward, elbows on knees. “Maybe I’m more welcome than what I want to say,” I said. “Are you responsible for what Tiempo has been saying about me lately?”

She dropped the pawn she was toying with, sat back, crossed her legs. “I am responsible for nothing Tiempo says or does. Who informed you that I was?”

“That’s beside the point. What is your connection with Tiempo?”

“I have sometimes given money to Cristoforo Mendoza— no more than that.”

No evasion, so far as I could judge; a plain answer to the question. I relaxed a little. “If you’re a friend of the Mendoza brothers, maybe you can tell me why they’re picking on me at the moment.”

She was silent for a while, regarding me. She said finally, “Perhaps, Senor Hakluyt, you are thinking of news papers.” Two words; she made the distinction perfectly clear. “Tiempo is not a news paper. It cannot be, because Liberdad is not. These are tools for shaping the opinions of people. Let me put it this way. Liberdad is little more than a—spare wheel for the television and radio services; it carries extra weight among those highly literate and influential persons who, after all, are the operative factors in our country. Against this, the opposition has Tiempo —and word of mouth. It has been a great achievement of Vados, to retain public confidence in his propaganda services; often, after twenty years, government organs speaking for a regime have outworn their public acceptance. People say, ‘I no longer believe! I have read—or seen—or heard—too many obvious falsehoods.’ Not here, senor.”

“That explains nothing.”

“On the contrary. Are you an angel, senor?”

“What do you mean?”

“You would not claim to be an angel. Yet have you raised so many objections to the way the television service has presented you? Against this, Tiempo tried to present something less favorable, admitted, but perhaps nearer the true state of things. We are all human, fallible, not all-knowing. And of course, you deny permission to state this side of the case. I do not blame you. I wish only that we spoke for the same cause.”

“For the hundredth time,” I retorted, “I’m not taking sides in the internal affairs of Vados. I’m hired help, and treating me as though I were—were a hired assassin is unjustifiable.”

“Whether you recognize the fact or not,” she said calmly, “you are a symbol now. Better that you should leave with your work unfinished than that you should altogether lose your power of decision and perhaps be destroyed by the disaster that now impends.”

“You seem very certain that there will be a disaster,” I said. “And what are your friends the Mendozas doing to stop it? Nothing. They seem to be helping it along. I saw a knife fight on Sunday evening over that attack Tiempo published against Dr. Ruiz. Fortunately it doesn’t seem to have caused anything worse so far.”