Len Deighton - MAMista

‘They’ve been renewing licences to prospect down there for ten years or more.’ Discreetly Curl produced a map of South America. He wanted to refresh the President’s memory about exactly where Spanish Guiana was situated. ‘But if it’s really big, Royal Dutch Shell are sure to want a piece of it … and maybe Exxon too.’

‘The word is out?’

‘Not yet. But Steve is screaming for exploratory drilling. When he moves in a lightweight rig, it will raise some eyebrows.’

‘Without drilling there’s no proof it’s anything but a dry hole.’

‘And after the drilling it’s too late,’ said Curl.

‘Too late for what?’

John Curl shrugged.

‘Tell me how you see it, John.’

‘The Benz government has been a good and reliable friend to America. But the real truth is that he’ll only stay in power as long as there is a literacy test for voters.’ He waited for that to sink in.

‘A literacy test for voters,’ said the President. ‘If only we had a literacy test for voters, John.’

John Curl was not to be deflected from his explanation by bad jokes. ‘Remove the literacy qualification and the Indian population would vote Benz into obscurity overnight. The sort of landslide that even a South American election can’t fix. Even as it stands, he sits uneasy on the throne. The guerrilla units in the south are highly organized, well disciplined and well equipped. There are districts of the capital – not half a mile from the Palace – where police and army can only go in armoured cars.’

It sounds not unlike Washington, DC, the President was about to say, but after seeing the earnest look on Curl’s face said, ‘Conclusion?’

‘Conclusions are your prerogative, Mr President. But Admiral Benz has had a long uphill struggle to bring democratic government to a primitive country that is essentially feudal. Money from oil could give him the chance to build schools and roads and hospitals and make his country into a show-case.’

‘Is this a plea to do nothing?’

‘Steve says the Japanese would do a deal with him … or maybe buy his whole South American outfit. Japan needs energy sources.’

The President thought about that and didn’t like the sound of it. ‘Should this go on the Security Council agenda, John?’

‘Leave it for a few days, Mr President. The fewer who are party to this the better.’

‘And if Steve starts talks with his Japanese buddies?’

‘If Steve talks to his mother we’ll put him into Leavenworth. I told him that, Mr President.’

The President stabbed the TV control and produced fleeting glimpses of an old British war film, ‘The Odd Couple’, a Honda commercial and then a blank screen again. ‘It would be best if Steinbeck held exclusive mineral rights.’

‘Yes,’ said Curl.

‘Let the British in there and they will start building a refinery; they can’t afford to ship crude across the water. We must keep it as crude, brought Stateside for refining. That way if the government there falls, we have a breathing space before anyone can raise the money and get a refinery built.’

Curl nodded.

‘I’m damned if I can remember who we have out there.’

‘Junk-bond Joey.’

‘Junk-bond Joey,’ said the President. The two men looked at each other. They were remembering the flamboyant entrepreneur who had purchased his backwoods embassy for untold millions in campaign funds. This was the man who had almost gone to prison for insider trading, a man who had recently created a minor diplomatic crisis by offering a punch in the head to an Algerian diplomat at a Washington cocktail party.

‘Tepilo is not Washington,’ said Curl reassuringly. ‘Tepilo is Latin America; very much Latin America.’

‘But does Joey know that?’

‘There’s a lot to do,’ said Curl. ‘We must tell Benz that he’s got an oilfield, and make sure he knows what will happen if he steps out of line. Most importantly, we must appoint a tough someone we can trust, to sit in on the meetings between Steve’s people and the Benz government. A tough someone! Benz won’t be easy to deal with.’

‘A trap,’ said the President. Curl raised an eyebrow. ‘An oil trap, until it starts producing, and then it’s an oilfield.’ He sipped his cognac and ginger. ‘We must be very careful … Article Fifteen, remember.’

Article Fifteen of the Charter of the Organization of American States declares that: ‘… no state, or group of states, has the right to intervene, directly or in-directly, for any reason whatever, in the internal or external affairs of any other state.’ Past Presidents had sometimes ignored that dictum, but lately political opponents had used a literal interpretation of Article Fifteen to beat the incumbent over the head. ‘Whatever it is,’ said Curl, ‘Benz has got one.’

‘Is Benz right for us?’ the President asked.

‘Who else is there?’ asked Curl. The President stared right through him as he drew upon his prodigious memory. He could quote long passages from documents that Curl had watched him skim through, seemingly without much interest. Curl waited.

‘There is Doctor Guizot,’ said the President.

‘At present under house arrest,’ said Curl without hesitation.

The President didn’t respond to that item of information. Curl bit his lip. He knew that his over-prompt reply had been noted as evidence that Curl – like the CIA and the Pentagon too – were prejudiced against Doctor Guizot’s liberal policies. The President’s next remark confirmed this: ‘We always back the Admiral Benzes don’t we?’

‘Mr President?’

‘America always puts its resources behind these anachronistic strong-arm men. And we are always dismayed when they are toppled, and we get spattered with the crap. Korea, Vietnam … Marcos, Noriega. Why do our “experts” in State fall in love with these bastards?’

‘Because there are sometimes no alternatives,’ said Curl calmly. ‘Could we support communist revolution, however pure its motives?’ It was a rhetorical question.

‘Sometimes, John, I wonder how it happened that in 1945 the State Department didn’t offer military aid to the Nazis.’

‘I’ve heard people say communism might have collapsed more quickly if we had.’

The President did not hear him. ‘Doctor Guizot. Not that bastard Benz. Not after that slavery business and the human rights investigation.’

Curl wanted to point out that the slavery allegations referred to peóns allowed a strip of land on the big haciendas in return for labour. But the President had paused only to clear his throat and, in his present state of mind, such remarks would not help.

The President continued: ‘Yes, the liberal press would make Benz into some kind of Hitler. Better Guizot. Guizot has a chance of reconciling the liberal middle-class element with the Indians, peasants and workers.’

‘Guizot is committed to removing the literacy qualification for voters.’

‘And that makes him sound like a dangerous radical, eh John?’

Curl didn’t smile. ‘A split vote could mean a victory for the Marxists.’ When no response came he added, ‘Karl Marx didn’t die in Eastern Europe; he sailed to South America and is alive and well and flourishing there.’

‘Just like all those Nazi war criminals, eh John?’ He scratched his head. ‘I recall there are other – rival – guerrilla outfits down there.’

‘Several,’ said Curl, who’d spent the previous couple of hours reading up on the subject. ‘But none that we could cosy up to.’

‘Are you quite sure? What about the Indians?’

‘The Indian farmers have a Marxist leader who calls himself Big Jorge. But Big Jorge rules in the coca-growing regions and lets the drug barons go unmolested in exchange for a piece of the action.’