The Five Arrows Part 72

"I am at Gonzales'. Can you pick me up now?"

"At once."

The sergeants were there in fifteen minutes. Pepe now drove an Army car whose color matched his uniform. They drove to the University for Jerry.

Soldiers were everywhere, patrolling the city, guarding both the Axis diplomatic buildings and the commercial houses owned by known fascists.

The streets were crowded with civilians. They hung around the cafes, listening to the latest election bulletins over the cafe radios, or they congregated under the government's loud speakers in the plazas and the broad avenues. Even though Gamburdo had already conceded his defeat, the people awaited the results of each new count, cheered each new electoral repudiation of the Falange candidate. Everywhere the sidewalks, the gutters, the doorways of stores and buildings were littered with whole or tattered copies of the leaflets exposing Gamburdo and Ansaldo.

"We gave them a licking they won't forget so quickly," Pepe chortled.

"Yes, but they are still alive, Pepe. They took a licking in the last Spanish elections, too."

"_De nada_," Vicente said, grimly. "Let them try to make a second Spanish War in our Republic. We'll drown them in their own blood."

Jerry was waiting for them on the University steps. "Matt, it was amazing. Translate for me, will you? I think Pepe and Vicente would like to know, too. As soon as the word was flashed to the wards that Lavandero won the election, the serious cases started to pull through, and the others are just about ready to dance. I've never seen anything like it!"

Duarte joined them as they were finis.h.i.+ng their soup. He was pale and upset. "The Axis got the news pretty quickly," he said. He picked up a bottle of brandy, poured a half tumbler and downed it in a gulp.

"For Christ's sake, what happened, Felipe?"

"The n.a.z.is," he said. "This afternoon, a few minutes after Gamburdo quit, a n.a.z.i submarine deliberately sank one of the Republic's unarmed freighters. It happened less than thirty miles from where we're sitting.

That isn't all. The s.h.i.+p had time to wireless for help before she sank.

And the n.a.z.is waited until the rescue boats had picked up the survivors before they surfaced again and sank each of the boats with their deck guns."

"When did you find out?"

"Hours ago. I kept quiet because I wanted to make sure about Souza. Now it's been confirmed. He was on one of the rescue boats. He is dead."

"Why, the dirty ..."

"Wait, Mateo. There is something else. Don't go. You had a call from Radio City in New York. They want you to broadcast to America at ten o'clock tonight. The Siglo station has the hook-up here."

The clock on the Bolivar dining-room wall read eight-thirty. "I'd better go right over," Hall said. "Eat and wait for me here, Felipe. Don't bother to drive me, Pepe. I'll walk. It's less than two blocks. Have some more brandy."

"I'm going with you," Jerry said.

"_Come in, San Hermano ..._" Over the long-wave from Radio City.

The station announcer gave Hall his signal. Hall mopped his face with his sleeve, glanced at his notes. "For a few hours this afternoon here in San Hermano," he said into the microphone, "most of us believed that virtue is its own reward, that the truth by itself is the most powerful weapon in the hands of a democracy.

"At three o'clock this afternoon, the fascist candidate for the presidency of this Republic conceded defeat in an election marked by the dramatic revelation of his ties with the Falange in Madrid and the n.a.z.is in Berlin. There was no bloodshed, no disturbances. Democracy had scored a bloodless victory in San Hermano.

"For thirty-five minutes and twelve seconds, the elections remained a triumph for the ideals of the late president, Anibal Tabio, a man in the traditions of our own Abraham Lincoln. It was Tabio's life-long belief that 'Ye shall know the truth and it shall make you free.' But Tabio, like the leaders of the last Spanish Republic, placed too much faith in the power of good and decency and progress and had too little fear of the fascist powers of evil abroad in this world.

"At exactly thirty-five minutes and twelve seconds after the fascist Gamburdo conceded the elections to his Popular-Front opponent, the people of this Republic learned that the world has grown much smaller since Lincoln declared that no nation could exist half slave and half free. Today what Lincoln had to say about one nation goes for one world.

This one world, our one world, is now torn by a global war. It is a total war. The people of this democracy struck at the Axis today by overwhelmingly defeating the Axis candidate at the polls. It took the Axis exactly thirty-five minutes and twelve seconds to answer the democratic people of this free nation. The answer was delivered by the torpedoes and deck guns of a n.a.z.i submarine lurking thirty miles from the docks of this port...."

He talked on, glancing at the station clock frequently. There was a lot he wanted to cram into his fifteen minutes. If possible, he hoped, he would be able to get in a few words about the big feature story on the front page of the bulldog edition of _El Imparcial_.

It was a long and lachrymose account of how Mexico was suffering because the food of the nation was being rushed to the American armed forces and how the war had forced inflation and shortages on that suffering Catholic country whose people had no quarrel with Hitler and no love for the G.o.dless Stalin.

The red sweep-second hand raced Hall through his account of this story.

"It is no accident that this piece of Axis propaganda should be featured on page one of the nation's leading pro-Franco paper tomorrow," he said.

"This is the Falange line for Latin America. This is the unnecessary acid the Axis is preparing to inject into the very real wounds Latin America is suffering and will suffer from this total war."

The announcer standing at the other microphone drew his hand in front of his own throat. Hall's time was up.

Jerry rushed into the studio from the anteroom, where she had been listening to the talk over the studio radio. She kissed him, took his hand as they went downstairs and into the narrow street which led to the Plaza de la Republica. "Where do we go from here, Matt?" she asked.

"G.o.d alone knows. Let's get married tomorrow. That's one thing we'd better do while we still have a chance. I used to think I belonged in the army. The army doctors rejected me for combat service; I'm too banged up. Twice I tried to get into Intelligence, the first time before Pearl Harbor. They wouldn't touch me with a fork. Sat.u.r.day, Colonel Barrows hinted that they were less squeamish about accepting anti-fascists into G-2. He hinted that maybe I could get an Intelligence commission."

"I'll go in as a nurse if they accept you, Matt."

"That's a big _if_, baby. But if they don't, we can go on fighting the fascists in our own way. We won't get Legion pins and ribbons and bonuses after it's all over, and the only uniforms we'll ever get to wear will be decoy outfits like the one I wore when I left Havana. But the fight will be the same, and the enemy will be the same. And we won't have to worry about getting stuck on an inactive front. We can pick our fronts.

"When it's all over, we'll go to Spain and we'll spit on Franco's grave and I'll show you where a great man named Antin died and where a kid lieutenant named Rafael killed fourteen fascists with one gun and we'll walk down the Puerta del Sol in Madrid with the most wonderful people I've ever known--what's left of them--and we'll dandle black-eyed Spanish kids on our knees until our guts begin to ache for kids of our own and then we'll make a kid of our own and fly back so he'll be born in Ohio like his folks and grow up to be a good anti-fascist President or at least an intelligent American Amba.s.sador to San Hermano. Ah, I'm talking like a fool, baby, talking like a drunk in a sw.a.n.k bar off Sutton Place."

The loud speakers on the lamp posts of the Plaza suddenly came alive.

"Attention, everyone! Attention!"

"Wait," Matt said. "Something's up."

"Attention! This is the Mayor of San Hermano speaking. Eduardo Gamburdo, wanted for the murder of Anibal Tabio, has fled the country. The Cabinet and a quorum of the legislature, meeting at six o'clock tonight, have unanimously voted that President-Elect Esteban Lavandero should be sworn in as President immediately. At ten o'clock tonight, President Lavandero took his oath of office from the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in the Presidencia. I will repeat this announcement. Attention...."

Hall translated the announcement. "Now Lavandero has been introduced.

I'll translate as he goes along."

"Citizens, members of the Popular Front parties, members of all parties," Lavandero began. "This afternoon, at three thirty-five o'clock, a submarine which has been positively identified as being of German nationality torpedoed a s.h.i.+p bearing the flag of our Republic within our national waters. The s.h.i.+p was sunk. The survivors and the men on the boats which set out from sh.o.r.e to rescue them were sh.e.l.led by this submarine. The losses have been enormous. At the last official count, we had lost over eighty citizens, all victims of fascist b.e.s.t.i.a.lity.

"Tomorrow, I shall go before the Congress and speak for a declaration of war against the Axis. Tonight, my first official act has been to promote Major Diego Segador to the rank of Colonel for outstanding services to our Republic, and to appoint him Emergency Chief of the Defense of San Hermano. I have asked Colonel Segador to speak to you now."

Hall put his arm around Jerry. "The war has come to us," he said. "We don't have to look for it any longer."

"Citizens," Segador said. "Our city is in sight of a wolfpack of n.a.z.i submarines of undetermined size. The lights of our city are therefore at the service of the fascist enemy. If you are on the streets, go into your houses, or into the nearest cafes or other buildings. If you are indoors, put out your lights, wherever you are. In five minutes, the street lights of the city will be turned off. This announcement is being recorded, and will be repeated for the next thirty minutes, or as long as one light remains lit in San Hermano. Our lights are the eyes of the submarines--we must blind their evil eyes.

"Soldiers on duty, remain at your posts and await further orders.

Soldiers off duty, report at once to your commanding officer. Sailors off sh.o.r.e ..."

They stood together, watching the people hurry off the streets, watching the lights go out in the lamp posts, in the cafes, in the houses of the old Plaza. They remained near the loud speaker, listening to the announcement repeated, listening to the national anthem, listening, finally, to the dark silences of the night. They remained frozen to the cobbles of the Plaza de la Republica which had been born in the days of the empire as the Plaza de Fernando e Isabel and whose cobbles bore the shadows of the edifices of the Conquistador generations and the Segura generations and the democratic decade. Monuments of all manners of life rose in dark, brooding piles on all sides of the Plaza; the slave life and the life that was half slave and half free and the free life which now had to fight for its freedom. In the dark Plaza, they could almost hear the young heart of the city, of the Republic, beating slowly, steadily, confidently.

"Darling," she said, "I'm not afraid of anything any more. I'll never be afraid again."

"I know," he answered. "That's what this war is about, baby. It's the war of the people who are not afraid to live their own lives. Let's go back to the Bolivar, baby. Pepe and Vicente are still expecting us."

Pepe and Vicente were sitting in their lorry, waiting for them.