Robert Stone - A Flag for Sunrise

“Instructions specify Israeli weapons wherever possible.”

“Well,” Ortega said, “in that respect instructions are wise. Everyone knows the Israelis handle supply for the gringos here to see to the Guardia’s needs and Israeli weapons for the most part are what we’ll use. If they’re captured we can say we got them from the Guardia.”

“Bravo,” said Sebastián Aguirre.

“Now prior to the main thrusts we have a diversion on the Caribbean coast.”

“Interesting,” Aguirre said, “but it’s proverbial they don’t care to fight down there.”

“Forget proverbs. It’s going to be a good test. We’ll hit the foreign property there and we’ll kill some notable sons of bitches. The Yanquis are convinced things are safe there, they think it’s a little apolitical paradise and they want to use their property to build resorts now. We shall disillusion them and upset the digestion of their guests. Maybe we can capture a Club Med, eh, Sebastián?”

“Very bad for our fighters’ morale,” Aguirre said drily. “And what would the French say? Did Golz’s man Godoy organize this?”

“To his credit, he did. He arranged for excellent weapons from the old-time smugglers there, so the enemy will be badly outgunned, at least in the beginning. It will frighten the gringos, move troops from the real theater of war and politicize the population. Godoy also cultivated the active support of some progressive missionaries.”

“An effective man, for sure.”

“No doubt of it. Now we can’t depend on success here — the methods are primitive, the Guardia may intercept our weaponry, we may not prevail. But nothing is lost if we fail here and it’s a traditional region of exploitation. We owe our people a front there.”

“One word of advice,” Aguirre said. “Don’t leave Godoy running a diversion. He’s too good, especially with the Indians.”

“I agree. While the southern Atapas are fighting under a la Torre, we’ll have Godoy with the Atapas in the north. A former Guardia officer, an Atapa, will be in military control.”

“It’s going to work,” Aguirre said finally.

“Clearly. The mountains are the key, the Atapas. The roads and the rivers closed, the coast unsafe, insurrection everywhere! Every night rockets in the capital. Within ten days we’ll have Tecan. San Ysidro falls as an epilogue.”

“Abroad,” Aguirre said, “they’re afraid of the North Americans.”

“This is shortsighted of them, with all due respect. They, of all people, should be aware of how it’s going in the world. For one thing we have a most moderate non-Marxist manifesto prepared and the North American embassy will be among the first to get copies. More importantly, a lot of gringo asses got kicked forever in Vietnam and Congress will never authorize any intervention on behalf of this present government.”

“Very good,” Aguirre said. “We can give the Yanquis the stick and the carrot — their own favorite method. We’ll be killing off their lousy spies while we’re reassuring them. They’ve got that coming for their own murders.”

“Precisely,” Ortega said. “And what can they do — destabilize us? Destabilize Tecan?”

The two men laughed together.

“I want a drink,” Aguirre said. “I want to drink to this now in case I die tomorrow.”

“Only one, compadre ,” Ortega said. “You’re a living treasure of the nation at the moment and I want to keep you that way.”

“A piss-poor treasure.”

“Nonetheless,” Ortega said, walking toward the door, “you are hereby nationalized. Later I can lay flowers on your monument — now I require you alive.”

During the time that Ortega was out of the room, the beating of Sebastían Aguirre’s heart made him clutch his breast. He felt nearly pulverized with excitement at the prospect of victory yet terrified as he had never before been of loss. Someone had said that the second-saddest thing in the world was not to achieve one’s life’s ambition and that the saddest was to achieve it. Who had said it? A Frenchman? Clemenceau? No, no. Oscar Wilde. He sat looking through the curtained window at the pseudo-Parisian facade on the building across the street.

After a few moments, Ortega returned carrying two glasses and a bottle with a few inches of Spanish brandy. He poured out the liquor and handed a glass to Aguirre.

“ Salud ,” Aguirre declaimed, and drained his glass. Ortega was amused and touched at the antique chivalry of his style. He returned the toast.

“Where in the world,” Aguirre asked presently, “did you find a la Torre? The man makes me tremble.”

Ortega laughed.

“Yes, a la Torre was a find. A fierce one, no?”

“It isn’t his ferocity,” Aguirre said, “it’s his essence, his life. The man is history. The personification of every Marxian insight. Everything I’ve ever believed about socialist humanism — it’s true in this man.”

“So true,” Ortega said, “as to be a vulgarization.”

Aguirre laughed in spite of himself.

“ Compadre , we are all vulgarizations of history. We have to live it out by the day — life, unlike sound philosophy, is vulgar.”

“Indeed. And you approve of Golz? And Godoy?”

“Golz, yes. For this stage certainly. And even more of Godoy, although I know you dislike him personally.”

“You’ve rarely met the man, Don Sebastían.”

Under Ortega’s disapproving eye, Sebastían Aguirre poured himself another small brandy.

“I’ve never met a la Torre until this morning, still I approve of him because of what I know. Now let me tell you something about the Godoys of our world.”

We’ll be off to Spain, damn the place, Ortega thought. Always Spain. Why not Algeria? Why not Angola, Vietnam, China?

“In Irún we faced the Carlists. I can tell you, my friend, they were superb fighters and they had great conviction. In a way, they were the most reactionary of all the Fascist troops. We called them Fascists too but they were not really such. They were fighting a jihad.”

Ortega nodded politely.

“I don’t think you’ve ever heard me speak against the Spanish Republic,” Aguirre went on, “but between ourselves there were some rather sordid bourgeois elements active within it. Some of these thought to act progressively and enrich themselves at the same time through the seizure of church lands in the north. Madre de Dios, what a storm this produced. In the name of Juan Carlos, this fugitive from a Velázquez, led by their priests and by mounted artistocrats — the real thing, Emilio, not like these ratones here but men who spoke their language and their dialect — they turned out to destroy us in the name of Jesus Christ.”

“Like the Cristeros in Mexico,” Ortega suggested.

Aguirre made a sour face. “The Cristeros were the stage of farce. An imitation, a primitive caricature.”

Ortega felt the first surge of sympathy he had ever felt for Cristeros. Farce to the gachupín Aguirre because they were brown Americans and not men of Holy Spain.

“These Carlists were in the grip of a metaphysical politics from which grew baroque mutant fruit. There arose such arabesque absurdities as anarcho-Carlism — all men would be equal and all political organization rooted in the sky. The preposterous Carlos would be king-surrogate for Jesus Christ himself, who would be the true, directly responsible King of Spain. Under His reign there could be only virtue and honesty, liberty, equality, fraternity based on the Sermon on the Mount. Imagine it, Emilio, we found ourselves fighting creatures out of Engels’ history, men who in their hearts believed much of what we believed, who should by rights have been shoulder to shoulder with us, but were fighting us to the death. Well, we could never say so in those days and circumstances but many of us admired them.”