Missionary Stew

Chapter 29

The road that Citron followed out of the capital was a narrow blacktop, much potholed, and patched in long stretches with gravel. It led through an exurbia of shantytowns built out of scrap lumber and plastic sheeting and cardboard and flattened tin cans. The road then curved up into the mountains, where no one at all seemed to live other than a few farmers who grew straggly plots of corn and raised small herds of goats and the occasional chicken.

The sub-subsistence farms gave way to what seemed to be neglected or abandoned coffee plantations. Citron checked his odometer. At precisely 3.6 kilometers after the coffee plantations began he started looking for the side road that was marked on the rough map slipped to him by the busboy in the Inter-Continental restaurant. He almost missed the side road because it was virtually hidden by some tall broad-leafed plants. They looked like poinsettia to Citron, although they were actually higuerilla or palma Christi or, more commonly, castor-bean plants. Citron did notice they had been carefully planted to obscure the dirt side road that turned out to be not much more than a rutted path.

Citron backed up and eased the Ford slowly through the screen of broad-leafed plants, which noisily scraped against the car’s sides.After bouncing slowly along the dirt path for 1.3 kilometers, Citron stopped the car and turned off the engine.

He watched as the one-armed man stepped out from behind a clump of bushes which, for all Citron knew, were coffee plants. The man was fairly tall, at least six feet, and thin. His right arm was missing. The stump poked out from the sleeve of a clean blue T-shirt. In the man’s left hand was a pistol of some kind. Citron noted that it was a revolver. Over his eyes the man wore a pair of dark, gold-framed aviator glasses. He was a narrow-faced, grim-mouthed man, and Citron judged him to be in his middle thirties. Beneath the clean blue T-shirt was a pair of white duck pants that were soiled with smears of either dirt or oil.

The man moved slowly over to the Fiesta. The pistol was not aimed at Citron, but rather at the Fiesta itself, as if the man were prepared to kill the car should it make any sudden move. When he reached the right-hand door the man shoved the pistol down behind his belt and used his left hand to open the door. He took the pistol back out, climbed into the car, and looked at Citron.

“You are Citron?” the man said in Spanish.

“Yes.”

“I am Mr. X.” This time he said “Mr. X” in accented English.

“Right.”

“We wait.”

“For what?”

“To see if you were followed.”

“I see.”

They waited five minutes in silence. Citron found it to be a comfortable wait without strain or tension. It was, he thought, something like waiting with an old and troubled friend. Citron had often waited like this with other Mr. Eckyses in other countries until they decided to speak of their hopes and fears. Finally, the one-armed man broke the silence with an observation. “You speak very good Spanish.”

“Thank you.”

“Your friend, Mr. Haere,” he said, pronouncing Haere “Ha-air-ray,”“his Spanish is not quite so good.”

“No, I suppose not.”

There was another silence, which lasted a full minute. “That is why I telephoned you.”

“Because of my Spanish.”

“Yes. My English is poor.”

“For what other reason did you telephone?”

“You do not know?”

“Not exactly.”

Mr. Eckys smiled without displaying any teeth. It was a slight smile, almost wan. “Suppose I said I was a bandit and that we intend to hold you for ransom.”

“Good luck.”

“You mean there is no one who would pay for your safe return.”

“No one.”

“You are a poor man yourself?”

“Very poor.”

“Yet you wear a fine watch.”

“A gift.”

“From a rich friend perhaps?”

“My mother.”

“Then your mother is surely rich and would pay well for the return of her son.”

“I fear that you do not know my mother.”

Mr. Eckys twisted slightly in his seat and raised the pistol so that it now was aimed at Citron. “I will take the watch.”

Citron shrugged. “It is yours,” he said and started to slip it from his wrist.

“Keep it,” Mr. Eckys said. “It was a test. A rich man would hesitate. A poor man would not.”

“Why wouldn’t he?”

Mr. Eckys frowned as he considered the question. “I am not sure,” he said finally, “but it is true. Perhaps it is because the poor have nothing to lose but their lives.”

“I can see you are a deep thinker,” Citron said.

“I think from here,” Mr. Eckys said, tapping himself on the heart with the muzzle of the pistol. “You may start the engine.”

Citron nodded and turned the key. “Where do we go?”

“Another two kilometers.”

“And then?”

“I will show you where it took place.”

“What?”

Mr. Eckys smiled, this time displaying a set of large white teeth. “The betrayal. That is why you are here, isn’t it? To learn the details of the betrayal.”

“Yes,” Citron said, putting the Fiesta into drive. “That is exactly why I’m here.”

They drove the two kilometers in silence until Mr. Eckys said, “Stop here.”

Citron stopped. Mr. Eckys used the pistol to point to a low mound, no more than a foot high, which was covered by weeds. The mound was perhaps seven feet wide and nine feet long. “We buried them there, all of them,” Mr. Eckys said.

“Who?”

“Myself and my comrades. We watched from over there.” He pointed to a stand of trees.

“I mean, who was buried?”

“The gringos. All nine of them. They killed each other. Later they were dug up and taken away.”

“When?”

Mr. Eckys thought about it. “It was six months ago — in June.” He opened the car door. “I will show you where it took place.”

Citron didn’t move. “I must ask a question.”

Mr. Eckys, almost half out of the car, turned to look back. “I will try to answer it.”

“How did you learn about me and Mr. Haere?” He paused. “That is my question.”

“Ah. I see. You are puzzled.”

“Yes.”

“The answer is simple. We learned of you from your embassy.”

“My embassy?”

“The embassy of the United States. You are a citizen of that country.”

“Yes.”

“That is where we learned of you.”

“They told you?”

“Told us?” Mr. Eckys looked surprised. “Us? We are the Committee of a Thousand Years.”

“I must apologize. I am not familiar with it.”

A gleam flared in Mr. Eckys’s eyes. A patriot’s gleam. A look of fervor crossed his face. “If it takes a thousand years, we will win back our land and free our people.”

Citron, finding himself in familiar territory, relaxed even more. He often had heard such talk in other hot countries. It was not only familiar, but also reassuring, even soothing. It somehow made him feel at home. “You are of the insurgents then,” he said.

“Of course.”

“And the struggle goes well?”

Mr. Eckys’s face darkened. “Not well enough.”

“But yet you were able to learn my name and that of Mr. Haere.”

“We have our people in the embassy. Pot scrubbers, floor sweepers, and such. A file was left untended. The Xerox machine was handy. It took only a minute. The woman who accomplished this pushes the coffee cart through the embassy. She pretends ignorance, but has a degree in economics from the University of Mexico.”

“And what did the file on Mr. Haere and myself say?”

“That Haere will use the information we have to topple the repressive government in Washington.”

“It said that?”

Mr. Eckys shrugged. “Words to that effect. I read only the translation, of course.” A thought came to him that caused his hand to stray back to the pistol. “Is it not true?”

Citron answered carefully. “It is true enough. Mr. Haere has had wide experience in toppling governments. An expert. I am merely the... propagandist.”

Mr. Eckys nodded his approval. “A vital role.” He turned again to leave the car. “Come, I will show you where the betrayal took place.”

Citron got out of the car and followed the one-armed man to the thick stand of trees. “What do you see?”

“Only trees,” Citron said.

“Come.”

Mr. Eckys led the way through the trees. There were stunted pines and a type of laurel and others that Citron didn’t recognize. They formed a thick, almost impenetrable screen that Mr. Eckys twisted through, Citron behind him. Then the trees ended.

“Look,” Mr. Eckys said. “They brought in a bulldozer to create it.”

It looked something like a meadow that the trees were now trying to reclaim. It was at least fifteen hundred feet long and perhaps seventy-five feet wide. Citron nodded. “A landing strip,” he said.

“Exactly.” Mr. Eckys indicated the trees. “My people were concealed here. The gringos’ truck was over there.” He pointed to the far end of the landing strip.

“The truck?”

“The cocaine truck.”

“I see.”

“The plane came in like this.” Mr. Eckys used his one hand to show how the plane landed. “It was an old plane with two engines. Of the Douglas company manufacture.”

“A DC-3.”

“Yes. I believe so. It taxied to the cocaine truck. A dozen gringos, all armed, emerged from the plane carrying suitcases. The suitcases contained the money. The cocaine was packed in drums.”

“Drums?”

“Oil drums.”

“How much was there?”

“Of the cocaine? A ton, I believe. At least a ton. Perhaps two.”

“Go on.”

“While the drums were being loaded onto the old plane, the money was being counted. There was so much money that they weighed it on a special scale. Then the gringos who flew in with the plane and the money tried to arrest the gringos with the cocaine.”

“Arrest?”

“Yes.”

“What happened?”

“The gringos who had supplied the cocaine refused to be arrested. So the shooting began. Four of the drug buyers were slain, as were five of the drug sellers. It was glorious. The pilot of the old plane panicked. He started the engines. The gringo drug buyers who still lived ran for the plane and scrambled aboard. The drug sellers continued to fire at the plane as it rose into the air. It was a splendid sight. Dead gringos everywhere.”

“What happened to the money?”

“Ah. That. It was loaded into the truck. The gringos left, leaving the dead behind. Some of my people followed the truck, of course. It went directly to the Presidential Palace, which was even then occupied not by a President, but by the repressor Carrasco-Cortes. Meanwhile, we buried the dead gringos, but first we photographed them, and then turned to our Cuban comrades.”

“To identify the dead men?” Citron said.

“Yes.”

“Who were they?”

“Nine were killed in the battle. Five were of the CIA.”

“And the other four?”

Mr. Eckys smiled. “They were of the FBI.”