Jack Higgins - Wrath of God

‘That is very kind of you,’ I said gravely.

‘There was much in the wallet of importance?’

‘Twenty or thirty dollars, some rail and steamer tickets and my passport.’

He raised his eyebrows. ‘So? Now that is serious. More so than I had realized.’ He looked in the file again. ‘I see from your papers that you were registered as a British citizen. This is correct?’

I said calmly, ‘That’s right.’

‘Strange. I thought you Irish had your Free State now since the successful termination of your revolution.’

‘Some people might question that fact,’ I told him.

He seemed puzzled, then nodded brightly. ‘Ah, but of course, now you have your civil war. The Irish who fought the English together now kill each other. Here in Mexico we have had the same trouble.’ He glanced at the file again. ‘So you would be able to obtain a fresh passport from the British Consul in Tampico.’

‘I suppose so.’

He nodded. ‘But that will take some weeks, señor, and what are we to do with you in the meantime. I understand you are not at present employed.’

‘No, I worked for the Hermosa Mining Company for six months.’

‘Who have now, alas, suspended operations. I foresee a difficulty here.’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I’m sure Mr Janos can suggest something.’

‘By God, I can, sir,’ he said, stamping his stick on the floor. ‘I’ve offered Mr Keogh lucrative employment – highly lucrative. For as long as he likes.’

Ortiz looked relieved. It was really a quite excellent performance. ‘Then everything is solved, Señor Keogh. If Señor Janos makes himself personally responsible for you, if I have this guarantee that you will be in secure employment, then I can release you.’

‘Was there ever any question of it?’ I said politely.

He smiled, closed the file, got to his feet and held out his hand. ‘At your service, Señor Keogh.’

‘At yours, señor,’ I replied punctiliously, turned and went out.

I heard a quiet, murmured exchange between them and then Janos stumped after me. ‘All’s well that ends well, eh, Mr Keogh. And I’ll stick to my bargain, sir. I shan’t take advantage of your situation. Five hundred dollars and your steamer ticket. That’s what I said and that’s what I’ll pay.’

‘A gentleman,’ I said. ‘Anyone can see that.’

His great body shook with laughter. ‘By God, sir, we’ll deal famously together. Famously.’

A matter of opinion, but then all things were possible in that worst of all possible worlds.

When we got back to the hotel, Janos took me round to the stables in the rear courtyard. A couple of stalls had been knocked out at one end and the truck stood in there.

It was a Ford and looked as if it had spent a hard war at the Western Front. There was a canvas tilt at the back and it was loaded to the roof with medium-sized packing cases. I checked the wheels and discovered that the tyres were new which was something, then I lifted the bonnet and had a look at the engine. It was in better shape than I could have reasonably hoped.

‘You find everything in order?’ he demanded.

‘You lost a good mechanic this morning.’

‘Yes, an inconvenience, but much of life generally is.’

‘When do you want me to go?’

‘If you left now, you could make the half-way point by dark. There is an inn at Huerta. A poor place, but adequate. It was a way-station in the old stage-coach days. You could spend the night there. Be at Huila before noon tomorrow. This suits you?’

Amazing how polite he was being about it all. ‘Absolutely,’ I said, but the irony in my voice seemed to elude him.

‘Good,’ he nodded in satisfaction. ‘Let’s go in and I’ll give you the final details.’

His office was just off the patio at the front of the building, a small cluttered room with a polished oak desk and a surprising number of books. My shoulder holster and the Enfield were lying on the desk and he tapped them with the end of his stick.

‘You’ll be wanting that, I’ve no doubt. Rough country out there these days.’

I took off my jacket and buckled on the holster. He said, ‘You look uncommonly used to that contrivance, sir, for a man of your obvious education and background.’

‘I am,’ I told him shortly, and pulled on my jacket. ‘Anything else?’

He opened a drawer, took out two envelopes and pushed them across. ‘One of those is a letter to Gomez, the man to whom you’ll deliver the goods in Huila. He has a supply of petrol by the way, so you’ll be all right for the return trip. The other contains an authorization to make the journey signed by Captain Ortiz, in case you are stopped by rurales.’

I put them both in my breast pocket and buttoned my jacket. He selected a long black cigar from a sandalwood box, lit it, then pushed the box across to me. ‘You’ll have a drink with me, sir, for the road?’

‘We have a saying where I come from,’ I told him. ‘Drink with the devil and smile.’

He laughed till the tears squeezed from his eyes, the flesh trembling on the gross body. ‘By God, sir, but you’re a man after my own heart, I can see that.’

He shuffled across to a side cabinet, opened it and produced a bottle and a couple of tumblers. It was brandy, and good brandy at that.

He leaned one elbow on the cabinet and eyed me gravely. ‘If I might be permitted the observation, sir, you don’t seem to care very much about anything. About anything at all. Am I right?’

That strange, rather pedantic English of his had a curious effect. It made one want to respond in kind. I said, ‘Why, it has been my experience that there is little in life worth caring about, sir.’

I could have sworn that for a moment there was genuine concern in his eyes although I considered it unlikely he could ever have afforded such an emotion.

‘If I may say so,’ he observed heavily, ‘I find such sentiments disturbing in one so young.’

But now the conversation had gone too far and we were into entirely the wrong territory. I emptied my glass and placed it carefully on top of the cabinet. ‘I’d better be on my way.’

‘Of course, but you’ll need a little eating money.’ He produced a wallet and counted out a hundred pesos in ten-peso notes. ‘You should be back here by tomorrow evening if everything goes smoothly.’

By now he was looking quite pleased with himself again which simply wouldn’t do. I stuffed the money carelessly into my jacket pocket and said, ‘Life has taught me one thing above all others, Mr Janos, which is that anything can happen and usually does.’

His face sagged in genuine and immediate dismay for, as I discovered later, there was a strongly superstitious streak in him, his one great weakness. I laughed out loud, turned and walked out. A small victory, perhaps, but something.

I was eighteen years of age when I first saw men die. Easter, 1916, and a sizeable section of Dublin town going up in flames as a handful of volunteers decided to have a crack at the British Army.

And I was one of them, Emmet Keogh, hot from my books at the College of Surgeons, still young enough to believe a cause – any cause – could be worth the dying. A Martini carbine gripped tightly in my hands, I sweated in ill-fitting green uniform and crouched at the window of an office in Jacobs’ Biscuit Factory, a romantic place to die in, waiting for the Tommies from the Portobello Barracks to find us which they did soon enough.

During a slight lull in the proceedings a Mills bomb came through the window and rolled to a halt in the very centre of that busy office.

There were six of us who should have died, but for some reason it didn’t go off until I’d thrown it back out of the window at the troops who had chosen that precise moment to make a rush across the yard.