‘Not much. Just got one lunatic in. I’ve thought of a novelty, though.’
‘A novelty?’
‘Yes,’ said El Electricista. ‘You make them swallow a string of little electrodes, and then you ram the picana up their backsides.’
Asado laughed. ‘Very nice one! Have you tried it yet?’
‘I have,’ replied El Electricista. ‘I tried it on the lunatic. It works exquisitely.’
‘Who is the lunatic?’ asked Asado. ‘Is it worth toasting him a little?’
‘He came in saying he was Emperor of Asia, but he is really a guerrillero from Chiriguana. Now he says he is “General Fuerte”. He is mad, but tough.’
Asado was taken aback. ‘General Fuerte was Comandante of Officer Training School when I was a cadet. General Ramirez ordered me three weeks ago to investigate his disappearance from Valledupar. Which cell is he in, the lunatic?’
‘Third on the left. I’ve kept him standing for two days in the cramp cupboard. I would not bother if I were you; he is no General, just a communist tramp.’
General Fuerte, on the verge of death, was transferred hurriedly to the Hospital for Sick Soldiers and, having stayed there for four months, was transferred again to the Villa Maravillosa Military Convalescent Home where gradually his arms returned to life with the help of expert physiotherapy. He shared a ward with a young Norwegian girl in a wheelchair who said she was Regina Olsen and that she had been shot and abducted by the army to a torture centre. In the ward there was a young airborne Capitan who had gone insane and kept repeating, ‘They were cholos. It was me who did it. I am the guilty one. It was me.’ Regina told Fuerte that the young man had accidentally massacred a tribe of Indians, and the army were too embarrassed to let him out. ‘They won’t let me out either,’ she added. ‘I shall probably be here forever. I don’t know what happened to you, but I expect you’ll never leave either. No one does. You are lucky,’ she added. ‘The last mistake in here had his teeth broken with hammers.’
Over the next week both Regina Olsen and the mad Capitan were gone overnight. The General was glad for them if they were safe, but worried in case a cynical solution had been found. One morning he put on his uniform, went for a stroll in the high-walled gardens, and noticed that there was a climbable tree with a branch that overhung the wall.
He jarred his ankle on landing, and limped to the roadside. He flagged down an already overloaded bus and showed his identity card to the driver, who was too scared and impressed to charge him for the ride and even made a detour to the army airfield. He threatened three officers with court-martial if they continued to resist his orders to assign him a pilot and a light aircraft to take him to Valledupar, and very quickly got his way.
When he walked into the office of the Brigadier he did not even say hello or return the other’s salute.
‘No questions!’ said the General. ‘I have been on a top secret mission and I have no time to talk. Who are the best soldiers we have here? Come on, answer me!’
The astonished Brigadier said, ‘We still have a company of the Portachuelo Guards, Sir.’
‘Good,’ said the General decisively. ‘They are to be ready for combat, provisioned for three days, and transport is to be arranged plus two empty lorries within one hour exactly. I also want three medical orderlies. See to it. I have an emergency to deal with.’
‘Yes, Sir,’ replied the Brigadier, saluting, ‘and may I say, Sir, it is good to have you back. I am much relieved. I feared for your life.’
‘Thank you,’ said the General. ‘I did as well.’ And he left to visit his own office, but changed his mind and returned to the Brigadier, finding him on the telephone to the quartermaster. He signalled to the Brigadier that he could wait until the call was over. When the orders had been transmitted the General told the Brigadier, ‘Under no circumstances whatsoever tell anyone, even General Ramirez himself, that I have been here or that I left with the troops. I am still officially missing, and acting under higher authority. Is that clear?’
‘Higher than General Ramirez?’ asked the Brigadier. ‘Surely there is no higher authority?’
‘You are showing your ignorance,’ said the General. ‘There is much higher authority. Please send someone to fetch the spare key to my quarters, and have them bring it here. At 1600 hours the men must be in the lorries on the parade ground. I shall stop en route to brief them.’
When the General entered his quarters he found them as they had been left, except that they were dusty and smelled dank. He heard a noise at the door and saw it swing open a little so that a chink of light appeared. His hand went to the holster on his belt, but then he stepped forward and bent down. He stroked its back as it arched and twined itself around his legs. ‘Little gato,’ he said, ‘I missed you. And how on earth did you know where I live? And how did you live?’
The cat mewed beseechingly and the General opened a small tin of corned beef for it and put it in a saucer. He went to change into combat gear, and spent the forty minutes before his departure making in the door a crude but functional cat-flap. He left a note in the Brigadier’s in-tray: ‘See to it that my cat is fed daily at 1800 hours.’
35
* * *
THE PRESIDENT DISCOVERS THE APHRODISIAC PROPERTIES OF REDUCING THE MILITARY
AT THE SAME time as Asado was concluding his first illicit deal to sell the orphans of his activities to childless couples in Europe and the USA, the three Chiefs of Staff were deep in discussion at the Senior Officers’ Lodge.
‘I tell you, it’s exactly the right time!’ exclaimed Admiral Fleta. ‘The public adore us because of Los Puercos!’
‘They also adore the President,’ rejoined General Ramirez. ‘It was all his idea, and he has received most of the credit, plus a huge majority in the election.’
‘He would have got that anyway,’ reflected Air Chief Marshal Sanchis. ‘Everyone knows it was rigged.’
‘He would have won without rigging it, though,’ said Ramirez. ‘That’s obvious.’
‘All the same,’ said Fleta, ‘the capital is bankrupt, the social services are finished, inflation is over four hundred per cent, and wages are frozen. The public is seriously discontented. I think they would support us.’
‘But they are blaming that on Buenanoce and Badajoz, not the President!’ retorted Ramirez. ‘His position is invulnerable.’
‘But why does the opinion of the people matter?’ asked Fleta. ‘They are prejudiced, irrational and idle. Surely we can rule without them?’
‘I suppose so,’ said Sanchis, ‘but we’ve got to be able to rely on the tacit support of the middle classes, who admire discipline and order and hate politics. We can safely ignore the workers because we have already crushed the unions, and the left wing is splintered into about forty warring factions. They are a joke. Did you know that there are five Communist parties all claiming to be the real and original one?’
‘There are six, now,’ said Fleta.
‘How so?’ asked Ramirez.
‘One of the parties expelled an activist for being homosexual, and he took some of the party with him. They’re known as the “Maricommunistas” by the party that expelled them, and they call the others the “Machocommunistas”. It’s all very droll.’
‘Indeed,’ said Sanchis. ‘And I hear that the Trotskyists, the Marxists and the Anarchists are in open warfare. We don’t need to fear the left at all; when they order a firing squad, they form a circle.’
‘Why have we been exterminating them, then?’ asked Fleta, genuinely puzzled.
‘Because they still create a lot of havoc,’ replied Ramirez, ‘and they’re the dung of the devil.’
‘This is a diversion, though,’ interjected Sanchis. ‘Are we going to assume power or not?’
‘On the whole, I’m in favour,’ said Fleta.
‘Right,’ said Ramirez. ‘I suppose, all things considered, I will agree, but only because it’s for the good of the country. Power doesn’t interest me, as such.?
??
Fleta raised a cynical eyebrow. ‘Does that mean you have no intention of taking the Presidency?’
‘Oh, no,’ exclaimed General Ramirez. ‘I don’t mean that at all. After all, the Army is the senior service, and the largest, so it’s only natural that I should be President.’
‘May I remind you that in the last fifteen coups before La Violencia it was always the Army chief who has been President?’ said Fleta, icily. ‘I think it’s only fair that the Navy be given a chance for once.’
Air Chief Marshal Sanchis broke in. ‘I must remind you both that the Army is deeply unpopular with the people, and that the Navy is extremely small. The Air Force is by far the most popular service owing to its romantic image. I should also remind you two that you are both sixty-three years old, and due to retire from active service in two years. I am only fifty-seven years old.’
‘Look at Stroessner in Paraguay!’ exclaimed Ramirez. ‘And at Pinochet in Chile! Gomez in Venezuela! They carried on into old age!’
‘Maybe so,’ replied Sanchis. ‘But in this country military presidents have always observed the tradition of retiring at sixty-five. If you break traditions like that people very soon begin to call you a megalomaniac.’ Sanchis looked from one to the other meaningfully.
‘I don’t care what people call me,’ replied Ramirez huffily, ‘especially representatives of junior services.’
‘Old military presidents always suffer lapses of judgement,’ replied Sanchis. ‘Look at Pinochet. He was crazy enough to call an election. Look at Galtieri; he went to war with Britain.’
‘But so did we!’ exclaimed Fleta.
‘Yes, of course, but we didn’t tell them, and they never found out for months, by which time the war was already over.’
‘I resent you implying that I am senile,’ said Ramirez. ‘If you were in my service I would have you shot.’
‘I too,’ said Fleta. ‘As a man of honour I should challenge you to a duel, but as a civilised man of manners I cannot.’
‘I was only trying to say that it would be a bad precedent to break with an honourable tradition,’ said Sanchis patiently. ‘I know that neither of you is senile.’
‘What about a fourth man?’
‘You mean a puppet president?’ asked Ramirez. ‘But we already have one!’
‘We’re talking about the well-being of our country,’ countered Sanchis. ‘Surely a puppet president would not be adequate.’
The conversation carried on in this vein into the early hours in the withdrawing room of the Lodge, and nothing was formally decided, except that they should have another discussion along the same lines on the following Monday. A tape of the conversation was delivered to the President by the Service of State Information, and in the following days he became very thoughtful and preoccupied. For their part, the Chiefs of Staff left the meeting convinced that something had to be done to reduce the power of the other two. A tangible mist of plotting began to fill the corridors of power.
One of the things that one can say without fear of contradiction is that long-serving military men tend to think alike; the only exception that springs immediately to mind is the radical military government of Peru, which instituted land reforms amidst a welter of bureaucracy worthy of the most egregious civilian government. Let us consider them to have been honorary civilians, and return to our own country, where General Ramirez, Admiral Fleta, and Air Chief Marshal Sanchis began identical campaigns of mutual destabilisation.
An armed force has three main areas of vulnerability: personnel, equipment, and command-structure; one can diminish the effectiveness of all three by attacking just one of them.
It all started innocently enough with four army helicopters mysteriously crashing in the mountains in the same week. Ramirez, without any real evidence, assumed that this was too much of a coincidence and judged that it was a case of collusive sabotage by the Navy and the Air Force. He arranged for a limpet mine to be attached to a Naval frigate, and for an Air Force missile cache to explode. Sanchis and Fleta immediately assumed that the other two forces were in collusion against them, and in the next two weeks the Army lost two tanks to ground-to-ground missile attacks, the Navy lost a reconnaissance helicopter and an offshore patrol boat, and the Air Force lost a brand new jet fighter from France.
All the commanders were furious and summoned their respective chiefs of clandestine elimination operations, exhorting them to do their patriotic duty for large sums, and informing them of precisely which ‘traitors’ were to be terminated with extreme prejudice.
The bomb under General Ramirez’ platform at the officers’ passing out parade went off after the ceremony, and killed no one. The assassin’s bullet intended for Admiral Fleta passed harmlessly through his hat, and the grenade in Air Chief Marshal Sanchis’ briefcase failed to detonate. They all became deeply nervous men, but continued to plot together as though they had no suspicions of treachery. The President continued to examine the transcripts of their conversations and wondered if he dared risk the fury of the military by having them arrested for high treason and then shot. He decided to bide his time and see how far he could encourage the three commanders to destroy each other and their respective forces. He summoned each one in turn to the Presidential Palace, and warned them rather vaguely of plots he had had intimations of from the Service of State Information. These plots, he told them, were being hatched by ‘certain members’ of the other two services; naturally the information was highly confidential and should be divulged to no one at all under any circumstances.
The Chiefs of Staff began to put into motion plans for infiltrating each other’s security services. This was almost impossible because you cannot, for example, infiltrate an army man into a naval organisation because membership applications would be carefully scrutinised by the Naval vetting office. Instead, it was found necessary to offer huge bribes to known members of other services, and no one knew anymore who was a single, double or triple agent. The subsequent atmosphere of suspicion and paranoia caused the operations against civilian subversives to cease almost completely because it took up so much time and energy to find, torture, and dispose of the operatives of the secret services of the other arms of the military. One of the ironies of all this was that although all the assassinations, abductions, disappearances, and explosions were automatically blamed by all of them on left-wing terrorism, the left suddenly found that it was no longer being persecuted, and it crept warily back out of the woodwork.
The Communists were once more free to distribute news-sheets condemning each other’s organisations and calling for unity, and Anarchists once more were free to paint slogans on bridges and police stations; the Trotskyists were once more free to accuse the Communists of Stalinism; the Maoists once more came out to preach perpetual revolution and collect centavos in aid of the Shining Path guerrillas in Peru. All of them talked enthusiastically as if the revolution was already achieved, argued with each other about ideological purity, and secretly missed the days when they had been forced to operate in elaborate secrecy, use passwords and secret drops, and secret meeting places in rat-infested cellars. The relenting pace of persecution made them feel less important, which insulted their pride. The Maoists and the Anarchists therefore began to leave bombs by military targets, not knowing that unofficially they would never receive any credit for it. If they had known this, it is doubtful that they would have bothered to leave any more of them, for nothing irks a revolutionary more than being dismissed as an irrelevance and as not deserving of notoriety.
The campaign between the military gained in momentum and viciousness; regular officers began to disappear from their homes in the boots of Ford Falcons, and their bodies would appear at graveyards and be buried as ‘Non Nombre’. Bodies would be hurled from aeroplanes into the jungle until the Anuesha, Jibaros and Bracamoros Indians began to accept into their mythology the idea that the wings of angels can actually fall off, causing them to crash to the ground. The Navy found a current that did
not wash bodies on to the beaches of holiday resorts, and the sharks became used to the sound of the engines of the launches that brought them their dinner, and would be milling around awaiting their arrival. The surface of the sea would briefly turn bright red, and would foam and heave with the furious thrashing of the sharks as they fought for morsels. Those unfortunates still conscious would attempt to swim away and be dragged down suddenly like fishing floats, only to bob to the surface again, to be dragged down once more. The Army attempted a similar method of disposal in a large tank of piranhas, and discovered that they did not quite live up to their voracious reputation, leaving the soldiers the unpleasant task of having to fish out the partly stripped bodies. That particular experiment was discontinued, and someone had the idea of trying to dump the piranhas in Admiral Fleta’s swimming pool. The latter only had the pool for the purpose of status and no one ever swam in it, so that the first he knew of it was when he was walking around his very large estate and saw the starved fish floating dead on the surface. He took it as a practical joke in poor taste, and never realised that it had been a particularly fatuous attempt on his life; just as hopeless, in fact, as the famous CIA plot to stage a second coming of Christ in Cuba so as to topple the atheist Castro.
Nobody can be quite sure of how many lives were lost in this clandestine internecine struggle, because all records were destroyed before the scandal could be investigated. A scandal was what it became, because the officers were the progeny of those kinds of family that are in a position to make a fuss when their sons disappear. Some of the protesting families began to disappear as well, and the scandal grew rapidly to epic proportions until even the newspapers began to print little snippets about it. The Armed Forces themselves, and the President also, blamed it all on the terrorists, but it was already common knowledge that only the military, the State Telephone Company and the State Oil Company had sufficient Ford Falcons to abduct people on such a scale. When terrorists abducted people, it was usually in battered old cars from the 1950s, which were all they could afford.