Jon Cleary - Mask of the Andes

Taber helped Carmel up the steps into the small lobby, sat her down on one of the bright yellow plastic-upholstered couches against the bright blue wall. The owner, a stout bald-headed man with gold-rimmed glasses and an air of being constantly harassed, came across from behind the desk with a small cylinder of oxygen.

‘The altitude, senor? Or excitement – I heard the shots—?’

‘Both,’ said Taber, watching to see that Carmel did not gulp in too much of the oxygen. He took the face-piece away from her and handed the cylinder back to the owner. ‘That’s enough. The senorita will be all right now. Will you get me a taxi?’

The hotel owner turned to call the Indian boy out from behind the desk, but stopped as the front door swung open and a police officer came in. The officer walked straight up to Taber and held out his hand.

‘The leaflet, senor.’ He was a short, thin-faced mestizo in his late forties, a man drugged by addiction to authority; he quivered now as if he were high on it, his eyes wide as he glared at Taber. ‘Hand it over at once.’

Taber looked down, saw that he still held crumpled in his hand the leaflet he had picked up in the plaza. He smoothed out the paper, held it up to read it. The officer made a grab at it, but Taber jerked it away. He was aware of the tension in the lobby, of the Indian boy half-crouched behind the desk and the owner holding the oxygen cylinder in front of him like a bomb he did not want; out of the corner of his eye he saw Carmel gasping no longer but now holding her breath, and beyond her he was aware of the owner’s angular wife standing unmoving in the doorway to the office. But he was not going to allow himself to be pushed around like some misbehaving tourist by this arrogant little policeman. He was here at the invitation of the government and the police had better get the message right at the start.

He read the leaflet: Death to the Jackboot! The People’s Revolutionary Committee … There was more in the same strain; he had read it all before, in three or four other languages. This one was in Spanish and Quechua; he wondered which language would get the greater response. He screwed up the leaflet and handed it to the officer.

‘It is an offence against the law to have such literature.’

‘You flatter it calling it literature. I picked it up in the plaza. I was just helping to keep the city clean.’

The police officer evidently did not appreciate irony. ‘You gave a gun to one of the terrorists.’

‘I gave him back his own gun. If I hadn’t, his friends would have shot me.’

Carmel had stood up, put her hand on Taber’s arm. She did not understand the Spanish dialogue, but she had made her own position clear: she was backing up Taber. He felt grateful to her, suddenly warming to her, and he put his own hand on hers. They stood in front of the police officer like a couple about to be married.

‘Who reported me?’ Taber wondered which of the dozens of people in the plaza had tried to curry favour with the police; none of them would probably dare to inform on one of the locals, but there was no danger in putting the finger on an outsider.

‘It is of no concern,’ said the officer; for the first time he looked unsure of himself. ‘Your name?’

Taber gave it. ‘I am already registered at your headquarters. I am an official guest of your government.’

‘The senorita?’

‘Senorita McKenna. She is a guest of Senor Alejandro Ruiz Cordobes, staying in his house.’

The officer’s face twitched as if he had been stung; or as if the drug of authority had suddenly worn off. He stuffed the leaflet into a pocket of his tunic, saluted perfunctorily, then turned on his heel and without another word went out of the lobby. The hotel owner let out a loud sigh; it sounded as if he had pressed the valve on the cylinder he still held. He looked at Taber.

‘The police chief himself, Captain Condoris. He has never been here before. Let us hope he does not come back.’

‘He won’t,’ said Taber, wondering why the police chief had not sent a junior officer after him. Or had Condoris thought he, Taber, had been an accomplice of the robbers and had had thoughts of making a spectacular arrest himself? He’s made a fool of himself, Taber thought, and he’s not going to like me from now on. ‘Get your boy to call a taxi, Senor Vazov.’

When the taxi arrived, Taber took Carmel out, put her in and closed the door. He leaned in the open window. ‘Go straight back to the Ruiz’s. No sightseeing, at least not till tomorrow.’

‘Will things be all right again by tomorrow?’

‘They’ll be all right again in an hour or two. But it would be better if you didn’t go out on your own again today, just in case there’s some more shooting.’

‘Will there be more of that?’

‘I don’t know. Sometimes in these countries the soldiers or police shoot up a suspect’s home just as a warning. They order everyone out of the house, then let fly. It’s bad luck if someone gets in the way of a bullet.’

She shuddered, lay back against the torn leatherette of the taxi’s seat; stuffing stuck out beside her head like grey moss. ‘I think I’ll be glad to leave here.’

He felt a slight twinge of regret. ‘I’ll be sorry to see you go’

She leant forward. ‘I haven’t thanked you.’

‘What for?’

‘For looking after me the way you did. You’re not bad, Mr Taber.’ She looked at him and nodded approvingly, looking through the exterior of him as an intelligent woman would. ‘I’ve met much worse.’

‘That’s the story of my life. Negative compliments.’ But he grinned, pleased by what she had said. In his turn he had met much worse than her, but he didn’t tell her that. ‘I’ll see you tonight. Ruiz has invited me to the welcome home reception for his son.’

The taxi, an old fin-tailed Plymouth, drove off, its transmission grinding alarmingly. I hope she makes it, Taber thought; and chided himself for not thinking to call Pereira for the Land-Rover. He found himself wishing that no harm should come to Carmel McKenna.

As he turned to go back up into the hotel he saw the policeman, a young stupid-looking Indian, already taking up his watching post on the other side of the street. Christ Almighty, Taber thought, they’re so afraid they have to suspect everyone.

Alejandro Ruiz moved through the slow surf of his guests like a dreadnought looking for a place to beach itself. He was accustomed to people coming to him , but this evening his wife had insisted that he must circulate.

‘You make me sound like a red corpuscle,’ he had protested.

‘Not red, my dear. You would have to be blue.’

Their exchange of humour had the usual heaviness of domestic sarcasm, but this evening there had been no real sourness between them. Both of them were so pleased to have Francisco home again with them that their lack of patience with each other, and their occasional deep bitterness, had been put aside. Alejandro was happy to play host to his friends at this party in honour of Francisco, but he was not happy to be told to remain on his feet all evening like his own butler. Especially since there were some guests, not friends, for whom, in normal circumstances, he would never rise to his feet.

Carmel, looking about her as she stood in the big living-room, felt she could have been in Seville. She had spent a month there two years ago when she had thought she was falling in love with a film director who had proved to be in love with bull-fighters. It had been an unsatisfactory month and a further part of her education in men, but she had enjoyed the Seville social scene, though she would not have wanted to belong to it permanently. This was a smaller Seville and suggested a much older one. But that impression came only from the men; the women, rebelling in their own way, in fashion, looked as smart and modern as any she had seen in Europe. No see-through dresses or precipitously plunging necklines, but then aristocrats never went in for those attention-getters anyway. And these people, though they held no titles, looked upon themselves as aristocrats.