Face to the Sun (18 page)

There it was, the Punchao at last! It joined me in the basket chair. I could imagine the morning papers in two or three days’ time. Victory over the communists. Raiding party thrown back
by our gallant defenders. Two machine-guns captured. Naturally, no mention that they belonged to the President’s yacht. Heredia could manage his press all right. Dispute a communiqué
of the General Staff, and you might well end up in Heredia’s private office under the palace – if enough of it remained.

Mayne wanted to get out as soon as the moon set and there was nearly complete darkness between the hills. I disagreed. The time to get out was now, when the Heredistas would be all gathered
around the captured gun and chattering in amazement at the empty hilltop. I remembered the rocks and gullies down which the mother and son must have come to search for the bodies of their dead, and
I insisted that there must be a path used only by the villagers of Ramales.

‘But what about you?’ he replied.

‘Give me a man to shove and one in front to lift. I shall leave the Punchao with you in case we are caught.’

Mayne agreed. He told me afterwards that he had thought I should be going to certain death either on the slope or as a prisoner. Well, I was not so sure. We were both inclined to forget that the
Heredistas did not know and could not know that we had the Punchao. So far as they were concerned, we were only a band of saboteurs, outnumbered and running for our lives.

So the rest of the party set off into the black cliffs of the night. Any sounds they made were covered by the chatter around the two guns – for the second had now been discovered –
and the attempts to move them. The shouts, the falling stones and the occasional splashes and curses as someone fell into the stream above the falls made the movements of the Heredistas sound like
a river picnic. After all, they had no reason to keep silent and the relief of reaching the top of the little valley without a single casualty made them even noisier than usual.

Meanwhile, the basket chair struggled upwards like a wounded lizard. Considering that we were constantly in a position where one man was pushing and the other supporting the chair with one wheel
in space, the lizard was remarkably silent. The biggest risk was that I should lose control and scream at the intolerable pain.

Once we were over the worst and above the two guns, Mayne and two more of his chaps came down to help and the party carried me and the chair to safety. We were in thick cover by the side of the
road to Jumilla, within easy reach of the rest of the party from the yacht.

It must be remembered that poor Hector had three loyalties: one to his wife, Carlota, one to the Punchao and one to me. Heredia’s objective was first and foremost the Punchao. If I were
alive I must be captured and the truth torn from my body, which in fact did not feel as if there was anything left in it to tear. According to Hector’s news, the main body of the Heredistas
must now be organised and on the march towards us without any opposition. The loyalty of this force was shaky, as we had seen at the time of the attempted mutiny, but we could not gain any
advantage from that unless we marched under the Punchao and Heredia was dead or a prisoner.

‘Who is in command under the President?’ I asked Hector.

‘Various stories. I don’t know for certain. What is obvious is that Heredia is taking no special precautions, simply advancing with a scratch force of various regiments. After all,
what have we got to oppose him?’

‘The Punchao.’

‘Oh God! Not Joan of Arc again! Teresa has become an army joke.’

‘But not as a standard bearer for her late father.’

‘Who is to represent him?’

‘Mayne. He has brought us luck.’

‘But he’s a communist.’

‘What could be better for a revolt of the army?’

‘But we don’t want any help from the Russians.’

‘You won’t get it. The last thing the Russians want is to be caught meddling so near to the Canal.’

‘Well, let’s go and talk to him! He’s between those two rocks over there. I can see the top of a bottle. Boy Scouts should be taught to keep it out of sight. I can easily wheel
you over there.’

We were welcomed with a grin and two good shots of rum. He held my mug to my lips with the precision of a butler and the gentleness of a nurse. Not a bad omen, I thought, for a future head of
state.

‘Mayne, tell us the truth: are you a communist or are you not?’ Hector asked bluntly.

‘In so far as my little-tolerated state is concerned, I am a Marxist. If you are referring to the larger economics of Malpelo I support what a fairly primitive agricultural society can
hope to obtain. Decent government and power without brutality.’

‘Gentlemen, if I could lift an arm to propose a toast,’ I said, ‘I would give you Mayne as the next President of Malpelo.’

‘But he can’t just be imposed on us!’ Hector protested.

‘Yes, he can. And never mind if Washington has kittens and has to finance an armed movement of the right. As for the British government, they have only to deny any knowledge of the new
hysteria of Central America.’

‘I have never heard of anything so damned ridiculous,’ Mayne said. ‘For one thing, I am an Englishman.’

‘Any village lawyer can make you a citizen of Malpelo. We have had presidents of French and German origin. Why not British?’

‘The people would not accept me. For one thing, I am not a Catholic.’

‘Well, the Archbishop can fix that.’

‘Do you really think so?’ Mayne said. ‘Well, I was very fond of the bishop whom Molinos appointed to the province. And so were my daughters.’

Donna came racing down the hill with a note from Pepe tied to her collar saying that the Heredistas had halted at the junction with the main road and were detaching a party to explore the cove.
In about an hour we should be dead or prisoners. Mayne looked dreamily at the blue Pacific.

‘Thought of anything?’ I asked.

‘Just meditating on the sixteenth century. How is the tide?’

‘Nearly a full spring tide,’ Hector replied. ‘There may be another foot in it.’

‘Then she might float if we all give her a hearty push.’

‘She will. The harbour guns hit her above the waterline. Hawkins, your ancestor would have cut her out! I know Heredia – he won’t be able to see her without going on board to
inspect the damage. He’s that fond of her. Hector, take your men quickly up the path and hide them well among the rocks. Any of you chaps from the underground garage who can handle a boat,
stay with me! The rest of you run like hell to meet our main force and give them the latest from the front. Tell them I’m going to capture the President and put to sea!’

We were all silent; but on considering the plan, it was not so unspeakably dangerous as it appeared. The President was unlikely to come on board with more than half a dozen of his guard and we
could easily deal with them. The yacht gave us no trouble. She was only just aground forward and with all of us shoving she came off the bank with only a slight grinding of pebbles.

The dinghy was hanging over the stern. We let it into the water, nearly knocking down the torturer’s head which we had forgotten. With the dinghy on shore, all was ready for His Excellency
to step into and be paddled by a couple of strokes to the steps of the companionway. All we needed was a flag.

It was a close thing. By now we could hear the irregular flutter of engines as the vehicles of the President’s guard descended the path and pulled out on to the beach on each side of a
gap. Was it for the President’s armoured car? Probable, but we could not know. We waited, six of us below decks together with me, hauled up from the dinghy in my basket chair and
half-conscious. The yacht’s engineer whom we had preserved as an indispensable prisoner before the yacht left harbour, kept the engines ticking over with a couple of rifles a foot from his
head.

The President’s armoured car came swaying down the hill and filled the space left for it. We remained still as corpses, but corpses now at least with a very good chance of escaping hell.
Mayne had slipped down into the engine room while Heredia was climbing aboard. The President’s face was radiant. Mayne had been right. The yacht was his very favourite toy.

At the helm was one of Mayne’s devoted seamen, who, like most of the inhabitants of Jumilla, was unknown to Heredia. As soon as the President went below to inspect the damage he was seized
and gagged. His eyes met mine for a moment. I grinned at him and passed my finger across my throat. It cost me a moment of agony to force a finger to the level of my neck but the expression on his
face was worth it.

Mayne’s orders to the helm were crisp and effective. ‘Full speed astern!’ I could guess that, but the rest of the Spanish orders were beyond me. They came thick and fast with
the result that we found ourselves close under the black cliff to the left of the cove where not a shot could reach us.

We were safe for the moment, but their guns – wherever they were – had only to extract themselves from the column, reverse up the hill and take position on the other side of the cove
to blow us out of the water. Could the shells reach us? Doubtful. If they could, were they likely to fire when their President and Commander-in-Chief was on board the yacht and possibly helpless?
The only solution for us seemed to be to put to sea and bargain for the President’s life.

The advance guard of the Retadores must by now have made contact with our runners and received a vague and dubious picture of what was happening. Were they close enough to come to the rescue? We
could not know and the longer the uncertainty con­tinued, the less secure we felt.

The first indication that all could be well was a satisfying explosion from the invisible cove followed by a whole tattoo of explosions which we could not understand. Hector dived in and felt
his way round the foot of the cliff till he could get a partial view of the cove. In five minutes he was back spitting sea water and cheers. Two of the guns of the Retadores were firing from the
hills above the cove on the packed column of the Heredista vehicles which could only escape by reversing up the narrow approach road or running down the rest of the way to the beach and turning
there, presenting a target which the relentless gunners above them could not miss. The sky, where we could see it, was full of bits and pieces of flying metal accompanied by the yells of drivers to
their neighbours to get out of the way. It was an indescribable tangle with flames trickling along the line of vehicles. Those who escaped had not yet lined up to engage in the descent.

We let the mess take care of itself, for we could only stay in place, rocking gently in the wavelets which came round the corner and profiting, I suppose, from the reluctance of the senior
officer of the Heredistas to turn the airforce loose on the precious yacht and the President if he were on board.

But we had far from won; it was stalemate. Shells from the well-equipped Heredista artillery were bursting on the edge of the cliff in an attempt to reach the yacht – a bold but futile
attempt, for we had only to go astern a few yards to make their shells as harmless as Handel’s Water Music. With our handful of men we could neither attack nor escape. The only possible
solution was to execute Heredia and let it be seen that he was dead. If they wanted his body they could have it.

Barely distinguishable in the general racket the bugles of the Heredistas screamed cease-fire. That was un­expected. They had an overwhelming force even without their main body. It was hard
to remember that they did not know for what they were fighting. To them the battle was the usual revolutionary uprising, easily squashed. It meant little to them that we held the Punchao.

‘Can we trust them?’ Mayne asked, looking up to the polluted sky as if it could give an answer. He came out from the protection of the cliff and faced the beach, where the mass of
Heredia’s infantry who had rushed the line of flame had gathered, and spoke to them in the Indian tongue. I could not understand a word, but the ring of the linked sentences carried its own
message. More and more Heredistas were pouring down through the gaps in the burning vehicles. They stopped to listen, accepting the cease-fire.

There was some movement at the head of the valley. My bearers told me that an armoured car had come down the hill and halted short of a gap in the flaming serpent of the Heredista advance guard.
I could see for myself that two female figures rushed across the cinders and were now striding hand in hand down the highest slopes of shingle on to the beach. These were Juana and the eldest of
Mayne’s daughters – as splendid a pair of Spanish women as one could wish to see, the one too generous in build but still commanding, the other a flower blown down from the dark forest
to the sea.

Juana had not realised who was in command of the Retadores and believed that I was. In retrospect, I see that for the moment she was right. For her my tattered basket chair had become a throne.
She fell on her knees before it, employing in real life every gesture she had learned from the cinema. Mayne’s lovely mestiza daughter stood behind her, playing the lady-in-waiting with a
perfection that was instinctive rather than acted. It was impossible that she could have had a swift word of advice from her father; they had been too far apart and separated by the smoke of the
burning vehicles.

I bowed to Juana. There was nothing else but my neck that I could move.

‘You must not kneel to me, my lady,’ I told her. ‘It is I who should kneel to you.’

‘You bought your freedom in London, Mr Hawkins. And you bought it again without money when you kept my secret.’

‘Then shall we make another bargain?’ I suggested. ‘If my commander agrees – and I am sure he will – you and your husband will be given your visas for the United
States on condition that you leave Malpelo tomorrow.’

‘You forgive him?’

‘Not for a moment. But we will forget what he did to me.’

The Heredistas were growing restive as their numbers flooded down into the cove. I had only one weapon left which I was preserving for some desperate climax. But the climax was on us now.