The Squares of the City

XXV

I had a dim recollection that when I came to Vados five weeks ago I’d felt excited and proud of having been selected to do this job.

Well, the excitement and the pride were finished. Now I was reduced to doing a scrappy job, collecting my pay, and getting the hell out. The only part of that I wouldn’t regret would be getting the hell out.

It took me about four and a half hours to work out a scheme for the monorail central that was exactly what Vados wanted: two new passenger access ways, extra storage room, and a parking lot that might be half full on saints’ days and holidays. It looked all right superficially, of course; I’ve worked the basic rhythms so far into my system that I don’t think I could any longer design a bad-looking layout. But there wasn’t any need for any of this. There was no organic unity about it. It was like — well, creating a demand artificially by clever advertising and then complimenting oneself on having filled a long-felt want. Compared with the scheme I’d worked out for the market district — which was real development, worthy, I liked to think, of the painstaking original planning of the whole city — this was patchwork.

I turned it in for computing at the end of the afternoon. It would cost more than it was worth — but then, anything of this kind was essentially worth nothing. The hell with it. I went back to the hotel and had dinner.

Vados’s directive had amounted to an ultimatum. What else was I to do except get this thing over quickly?

Not long after I entered the dining room at the hotel, Maria Posador also came in. I hadn’t seen her for some days, and at the back of my mind I’d been wondering where she might have got to. Now she showed up with someone I failed to recognize at first, because I’d never before seen him in plain clothes. It was el Jefe O’Rourke, looking incredibly wrong as a foil to Señora Posador’s effortless elegance.

For someone who supposedly enjoyed a merely tolerated status in Ciudad de Vados, a bitter enemy of the president, who was alleged to be permitted to remain in the country only so that an eye could be kept on her subversive activities, Maria Posador had a respectably long list of influential friends. This particular mismatch just about capped all the others. I watched covertly while I was eating and saw that O’Rourke ate with gusto and was talking little, while Maria Posador ate rather little and seemed to be saying a lot. Occasionally O’Rourke rumbled into laughter, while his companion looked on with a tolerant smile. Their whole manner was that of old and close friends.

I was really getting curious when I finished my meal.

They came into the lounge for coffee and a game of chess after dinner, and, much to my relief, Maria Posador invited me to join them. O’Rourke commented on the fact by glancing at her, at me, and then at her again, but said nothing. In fact, his contribution to the conversation at first consisted of grunts before making his own moves and after Maria Posador had made hers.

I would never have pictured O’Rourke as a chess-player in any other country in the world, except perhaps the Soviet Union. In the States or back home I’d have said he probably played poker for relaxation. Nonetheless he played competently, with a style that fitted his personality: direct, aggressive, concentrating on the officers and not worrying much about pawn development except to ensure that his pawns got in his opponent’s way rather than his own. This two-fisted technique had faults; he would probably have made mincemeat out of me, but Maria Posador was on playing terms with grand master Pablo Garcia, and pretty soon the game was going all her way.

Trying to stir up conversation, I said, “This game is so popular here I’m surprised I haven’t seen any fights over it.”

O’Rourke raised his head and gave me a blunt look. “In our country, señor, we know this is the game which is always honest. We save our bad temper for other things which are not so.”

Señora Posador cut in quickly, “But that is not always true. You will hear sometimes of fights, if not about the game itself, then about the bets that have been made on the result of a match.”

O’Rourke moved a pawn and sat back with a satisfied noise. “Betting is for fools. We have more fools than we need, anyway.”

Maria Posador took the pawn, and O’Rourke scratched his chin thoughtfully. Before making his own countermove, he glanced at me. “The señor himself plays chess?”

“If you can call it playing. Ask Señora Posador — she beat me easily.”

“Señor Hakluyt has some understanding of the game,” said Señora Posador, her eyes on the board, “but lacks practice in the principles of combination.”

“He should then use his eyes and look about him,” O’Rourke retorted, and decided to castle queen side, about four moves later than he should have done. “Except that in actuality few people obey rules, there is much to be learned from what can be seen in the world.”

I had a fleeting impression that Maria Posador would have preferred the conversation to turn into other channels. I snapped quickly, “In what way, Señor O’Rourke?”

“Check,” said Señora Posador, taking another of O’Rourke’s pawns. “I think what Tomas means, Señor Hakluyt, is the same as I was saying to you the other day. One must not think from move to move, in real life as in chess; one must remember the overall picture.”

She gave me a sweet and dazzling smile, and — I thought, but couldn’t be sure — trod hard on O’Rourke’s toe under the table. O’Rourke caught on; I didn’t get anything further out of him, and eventually I gave up trying and went to the bar.

It was almost empty this evening. The now useless television set was gone from its regular place, and where it had stood was a shabby old radio, obviously dug out of storage. It was giving out with a pep talk when I arrived; I recognized the voice of Professor Cortes, who had assumed temporary direction of the emergency broadcasting service. I listened for a little while, but there was no real meat in the words. Aside from another broadside at Miguel Dominguez — Cortes was still not convinced, apparently, of the charges he had made about Caldwell and the health department — it was a woolly reiteration of trust in God and the President to see the citizens through their time of tribulation.

Mayor had certainly been a loss to the regime — perhaps far more of a loss than the television center itself. As a publicity man, Cortes was a good dishwasher.

Shutting my ears, I said to Manuel, who was polishing glasses behind the bar, “Señora Posador spends a lot of time in this place, doesn’t she?”

Manuel’s dark eyes flitted across my face. “She lived in this hotel when she first returned to Aguazul after her time of exile, señor,” he said. “She had grown fond of it, I am told.”

“Ah-hah. For someone who’s supposed to be in official disgrace, she seems to have a lot of important friends, doesn’t she?”

“Many of them were friends of her husband, señor.”

“Of course. Does that include el Jefe?”

“I believe so, señor. El Jefe is her guest to dinner here this evening — you have perhaps seen?”

“Yes, I saw. You’re a fountain of information, Manuel — maybe you can tell me whether they’ve made any progress toward finding out who burned down the television center. I was just wondering when I saw this old radio you’ve put up on that shelf.”

His eyes switched briefly to the radio and back to the glass he was rubbing. “It is said not, señor, and — and some people begin to be disquieted. For many reasons. Whoever took away our television has made himself many enemies. Because, you understand, the chess championships have now commenced, and it has been customary for them to be shown on the television for many years. Now there is no television, and it is much more difficult to understand what is being done from a spoken description on a radio.”

I sipped my drink. “So presumably there are a lot of people who want to know why the police haven’t already presented the culprit’s head on a plate.”

“Exactly, señor.” Manuel sighed. “I am myself one of the people who desire that, señor. This year my son is playing in the junior division, and I wished much to see him on the television. But—” and he shrugged expressively before putting the glass, sparkling, on its shelf and taking another.

I thought over what I had just heard. So O’Rourke was in Dutch with the public, was he? I wondered why he hadn’t produced some kind of scapegoat to distract public attention. Maybe he would. Maybe he and Señora Posador were hatching something this evening. I went back to the lounge to see if they were still there, but they had gone.

Obviously, they had been hatching something. Next morning’s Liberdad stated that the police had descended on the city health department, acting on instructions from someone unspecified, but assumed to be Diaz — assumed by the paper, that is — and had questioned Caldwell extensively about the situation in the shantytowns. O’Rourke was quoted as saying that Caldwell had no right to make wild statements about the incidence of crime among the squatters; the police hadn’t found the lawlessness Caldwell described, and it was an unjustified reflection on their devotion to duty to talk of it.

In other words, “Mind your own business!”

That seemed like good advice to me, too. Such as my business was at the moment. Vados accepted the plan I’d given him for the monorail central — I’d been pretty certain he would — and gave orders for it to be published at once. I got the impression that he had been pretty desperate for some favorable publicity, because naturally, since he and his city were so tied together in the public’s mind, the recent disturbances had been extremely bad for his status.

I could have done without the effusive comments on my skill and ingenuity which accompanied the publication of the plan; if that got to the eyes of any of my potential future employers, it would likely do considerable harm to my status, too.

What the hell!

I went over to see Seixas in the treasury department about the estimates for the project, and he greeted me with a smile that threatened to cut his head in two.

“Señor Hakluyt!” he exclaimed. “Come in! Siddown! Have a drink! Have a cigar!”

It was a tan suit, with palm-trees on the tie, today, and the cigar I got was bigger than usual. Seixas was plainly in a tremendously good mood.

“Yeah!” he said, sitting back. “An’ why not? You done me a lot of good, Hakluyt! You know people been throwing mud at me ’cause I hold stock in some construction firms — you saw about that in Tiempo prob’ly.”

I indicated that I had.

“Well, I thought I was shut of that crap when Felipe Mendoza got carved up and his brother got jailed for contempt. Not a bit — here comes this lawyer Dominguez an’ starts all over. Well, this plan you turned out, no one can say my company gets a cut, ’cause they don’t do this kinda work. They do big stuff — divided highways, overpasses, that kinda thing. So I call up Dominguez, an’ I say how about it, unless he can prove I get a cut of this one he’d better shut his trap permanently. And I get this back. How’s that for eating dirt?”

He flipped open the drawer of his desk and hauled out a folded letter for me to read. It was on a neatly printed letterhead bearing the title of Dominguez’s law office, and said:

“How’s that, hey?” said Seixas, and poured himself another shot of his habitual nauseating cocktail.

It didn’t mean much to me; it struck me that it was a most lawyerlike sidestepping of the point, seeming to say a lot, actually saying almost nothing. Still, Seixas was delighted with it, and I made complimentary noises.

“That’ll show the bastard I mean business!” said Seixas, and shoved the letter back in his drawer.

With a bit of difficulty I got him down to business and managed to get provisional approval for the estimates I had; I didn’t really much care what happened to such a makeshift plan, and Seixas didn’t, either — maybe because his construction firm genuinely wasn’t getting a slice of this one. So the matter was disposed of quickly, and that was that.

I ran into Dominguez lunching in a restaurant near the law courts the following day. He was by himself, and I saw that he was frowning over the front-page spread in Liberdad that had been given to my plan for the monorail central.

All the other tables were at least partly occupied; I had the headwaiter show me to Dominguez’s. He looked up and nodded coldly to me, but didn’t speak before going back to his perusal of the newspaper.

I said after a frigid interval, “You’re perfectly right, Señor Dominguez. It’s a mess, isn’t it?”

He thrust the paper aside and scowled at me. “Then what have you permitted it for, Señor Hakluyt?” he countered.

“I’m hired,” I said. “Vados gave me an ultimatum: do it his way, and disregard my personal opinions. So I’ve done it. I did my best to prevent it — I told Vados, I told Diaz, I told Angers, I told everyone I could reach, that if you just throw the squatters out, you’re creating a fund of ill-will that may possibly end in revolution. I sent a memorandum to Diaz about it, and I’m told the cabinet discussed it, and in the end Vados vetoed it. What the hell am I to do?”

He recognized the genuine bitterness in my tone and appeared to thaw a little. “That is interesting, señor. I had not heard. Have you perhaps heard that you have a powerful ally in your opinion?”

“The most powerful ally I seem to have is Sigueiras,” I said acidly. “Wherever he may be — he’s still in hiding, I suppose.”

“Ah — yes, in a sense. He could probably be found today, if it was necessary.” Dominguez spoke indifferently. “But perhaps you have wondered why no steps have been taken to evict the squatters under the monorail central. After all, it seems they all conspired to conceal Señor Brown, a wanted man.”

“I suppose something ought to have been done by now,” I agreed.

“Yet it has not. And why not? Because it would be necessary to use troops for the eviction, and our commander in chief General Molinas has declared that he could not trust his men to do the work. Many of them, after all, are peasants like the squatters, who had no better chance in life than to enter our little toy army. Their officers are, most of them, upper-class dilettanti, who would sooner associate with criminals than with common soldiers. Moreover, there is an element of racial prejudice involved; as you are perhaps aware there exists in some parts of Latin America a kind of social hierarchy based on percentage of European blood, and in our army this is quite marked. It is an exceptional man who despite Negro or Indian ancestry achieves advancement.”

“This is most interesting,” I said thoughtfully. “Thank you for telling me.”

“Do not thank me for anything, Señor Hakluyt. I wish only one thing: that we had met under happier circumstances. For as the situation is, I and those in Ciudad de Vados who think as I do are compelled to regard you as a menace, because you reinforce the capacity of our opponents to implement their highly dangerous plans. This is an honest statement, señor; I hope you will take advice, not offense, from it.”

“I’ll try,” I said.

He folded his newspaper so that the article about my plan was concealed, and let it fall to the floor. “So!” he said. “Let us talk of other things.”

“I’d rather ask you a further question on the same subject, if you don’t mind,” I said. “I was talking with Seixas yesterday.”

Dominguez frowned. “I have no doubt what you are going to say. Seixas is a cunning man, but little else than cunning.”

“I was wondering why you — uh — backed down in your attack on him. I can’t make out if he really is an open scandal or simply a target for random criticism.”

“Oh, he is notorious. But we have more important matters to deal with. Flagrant offenders will sooner or later hang themselves. We must expose the subtler forms of corruption.”

After that we did talk of other things, desultorily, until it was time for me to leave. I had been asked to call on Caldwell in the health department, reason unspecified.

I found him in a pretty bad way. He looked extremely tired, and his stutter was the worst I had heard it since his gruelling by Fats Brown during the Sigueiras case. Distractedly, he waved me to a chair and offered me a cigarette. He was going to take another himself when I pointed out that he already had one burning in an ashtray on the desk.

He gave a nervous laugh. “I’m s-sorry,” he said with an effort. “I haven’t f-felt so good s-since that b-bastard O’Rourke went for me — d-did you read about that?”

I nodded.

“S-scandalous!” said Caldwell with vigor. “I’m c-certain O’Rourke has some k-kind of interest in hiding the t-truth. If it weren’t for the sh-shantytowns, m-maybe he’d be out of a job.”

“This sounds like the old one about doctors having a vested interest in disease,” I said when I’d recovered from my surprise.

“Oh, you d-don’t understand!” said Caldwell irritably. “I mean s-someone must be p-paying him what-you-call-it. P-p—”

“Protection money?” I said incredulously. “But what for?”

“Th-that’s right! What f-for? What for? T-to k-keep quiet about what g-goes on in th-these p-places, naturally.” Caldwell thrust his hands through his already untidy hair and gave me a defiant look through his glasses.

“Look,” I said, “you’ve obviously been overstraining yourself. I’ve been to the shantytowns, I’ve been through this place under the station, and I haven’t seen anything half as bad as the things they were putting over on television, for instance.”

“Ah, but you went there in the daytime, didn’t you?” exclaimed Caldwell, pouring the words out in a rush without a hesitation. “I t-told the newspaperman about th-that when I s-spoke to him this morning. I t-told him what the t-truth must be.”

“You mean you’ve told the papers — I mean Liberdad — that O’Rourke is hiding something?”

“I t-told the t-truth,” said Caldwell with dignity. “And now I’m going to p-prove it. You’re an outsider, Hakluyt, s-so you’re an independent witness. I want you to c-come along t-tonight and s-see for yourself.”

I almost said, “You must be out of your mind!” And then I didn’t. Because it occurred to me, watching Caldwell’s wild expression, that that was very probably true.

I changed the remark to, “Well, what do you think does go on there?”

“All k-kinds of vice, Hakluyt! I’ve s-seen it. And if you c-come with me tonight, I’ll sh-show you.”

I frowned and didn’t reply for a moment. It was logical, of course, that there would be at least a few prostitutes operating out of the shantytowns — poverty dictated it. But to accuse el Jefe himself of graft, and to accuse — most likely with justice — a few local police officers of turning a blind eye, were two totally different things.

“You’ll come with me?” he insisted hotly. I yielded with a sigh, and he rose and shook my hand warmly.

“You’ll s-see!” he said.

I went back, frowning, to the traffic department after arranging to see Caldwell at one of the shantytowns at eightp.m., and called in on Angers to consult him about Caldwell’s condition.

He greeted me with comparative warmth, for him. “We’re going all-out on this plan of yours,” he said. “Well done!”

I scowled; this enthusiasm for what I could only regard as rubbish was getting me down. “How does Diaz feel about it?” I asked.

“Well, of course, he hasn’t got a leg to stand on. One almost has to feel sorry for him. I don’t mind saying it’s put me in a pretty sticky position, because of course while Diaz is nominally my chief, Vados is mayor of the city, and in this case it’s what he says that counts. However, I must say the argument has been a very interesting one — it’s a pity you’re not a citizen, because there’s an important principle at stake.”

“It strikes me a still more important principle would have been to make the whole damned city self-governing, instead of crossing it up with the national government.”

Angers gave his barking laugh. “They have a genius for complex things like this in Latin America, Hakluyt. You ought to try Brazil for real confusion.”

“I’ve had enough confusion to last me a lifetime. Angers, what do you make of Caldwell’s behavior lately?”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, he asked me to go and see him, and I’ve just been over there. He’s got some crazy notion in his head that O’Rourke is being paid to conceal some kind of vice-racket — at least, as far as I can make sense of what he says. I’m supposed to be going on a sort of voyeur’s tour with him this evening. Is there any foundation for this, do you suppose? Or is he just suffering from overstrain?”

“Good Lord!” said Angers, blinking. “Well! O’Rourke isn’t exactly a paragon of efficiency — that’s well-known. But I always thought he was a fairly honest man — if he weren’t, I don’t suppose Vados would tolerate him. Who’s supposed to be paying him — anyone in particular, or just individuals?”

“Search me. Frankly, I think the guy’s about to blow his top. Who’s his chief — Ruiz? Someone ought to keep an eye on him. I mean, there’s enough mud being thrown at O’Rourke already, and some of it probably ought to stick, but this is irresponsible nonsense so far as I can see.”

“Well, I don’t know. Caldwell’s young and hard-working; he’s always been the nervous type, but then one can understand that, with that stutter he suffers from. I’d be inclined to think there was something to what he says. But on the other hand it has all been denied by O’Rourke, hasn’t it?”

He made a note on his scratch pad. “I’ll say something to Ruiz, if you like. Maybe he needs a rest.”

And yet, when I met him that evening at the appointed time and place, he seemed much calmer and more in control of himself. He wasn’t alone; there were two policemen and a photographer with him. I wondered whether O’Rourke knew about the policemen — I didn’t think he would approve of them helping Caldwell to gather evidence against him.

It was cloudy tonight, but warm, and the shantytown was like a set for an experimental film as we moved into it, Caldwell authoritatively taking the lead. An air of sullen hostility met us, brooding heavy over the beaten, unweather-proofed matchboard hovels, decorated if at all with torn oil-company posters and pinup calendars from the year before last. If we had not been a formidable group, we would probably have had things thrown at us. Rotten eggs, perhaps. Or knives.

Caldwell was carrying a flashlight; as we passed a patch of ground scratched with a hoe into some kind of cultivable condition, he stabbed the beam down at the plants growing there. He said, “Look!”

I looked; I saw only a plant growing. “Th-that’s hemp,” said Caldwell. “You g-get marijuana from th-that.” His voice was tense and triumphant. “S-see, Hakluyt?”

I wasn’t surprised. In fact, I wasn’t surprised at anything Caldwell showed me during our tour. We walked in on families sleeping five to a hut, and Caldwell invited me to express disgust, which I duly did. But this was no surprise; it was inevitable, given the conditions.

Before another hut we halted, and Caldwell turned to me, indicating silence. “A s-streetwalker lives here,” he hissed in confidential tones. “Th-there are d-dozens of them!”

“There are always dozens of them!” I said irritably. So far the biggest surprise he’d sprung on me was his comparatively reasonable manner this evening, his air of confidence.

He walked up and flung back the door of the hut. The beam of his flashlight speared around the empty interior. “Off after more customers,” he said in a low tone. “See here, Hakluyt — in this box.”

His voice shook a little. I shrugged and went to see what he had found. It proved to be a crude wooden chest containing a leather whip and some boxes of contraceptives.

His eyes searched my face for a reaction. Slowly his confidence began to evaporate.

“Look, Caldwell,” I said as kindly as I could, “you’ll always get this sort of thing where there’s poverty in a big city. You can’t legislate it out of existence. It’s been tried, over and over again. I’m afraid you haven’t proved anything that wasn’t self-evident.”

He drew himself up and kicked the wooden box aside. “It was a mistake for so many people to come,” he snapped, his stutter vanishing for the moment as it seemed to when he shot out a single phrase he had been turning over in his mind beforehand. “S-sorry, Hakluyt,” he added after a moment. “I ought really t-to sh-show you what g-goes on down in S-Sigueiras’s p-place, but it’s d-dangerous to g-go th-there.”

We went back in silence to the place where our cars were parked. Caldwell was muttering something under his breath when we stopped, and I asked for a repeat.

“I said Mendoza knew,” he declared. “He wrote about it in one of his b-books. He d-described exactly the s-sort of th-thing I s-saw. Someone is c-covering it up now. Who? Why? We’ve g-got to find out, Hakluyt!”

“For the last time,” I said, taking a deep breath, “how much of this alleged vice have you seen for yourself, and how much did you just get out of some dirty story by Felipe Mendoza?”

With dignity, he drew himself up. “I t-tell you I’ve s-seen for myself!” he forced out between his teeth.

“All right,” I said, losing patience. “I haven’t. And if nothing worse goes on than what you’ve demonstrated this evening, then all I can say is that this is one of the most moral places I’ve ever set eyes on. Good night!”

I walked away to my car, fuming, feeling his hurt stare following me.

Baseless or not, Caldwell found a willing audience for his accusations in other people than me.

Bishop Cruz was one of the first to join the fray. Addressing a class of graduates from the theological faculty at the university, he denounced Sigueiras as close kin to a child of Satan, and his slum as a short cut to hell.

He probably wasn’t looking for the response he got.

Somewhat puzzled — so I gathered — but prepared to accept the evidence of a bishop as superior to that of their own senses, the simple-minded inhabitants of the slum grew terribly worried about the state of sin they must be living in. Accordingly, a fair proportion of them bundled up their belongings and walked out, together with their livestock, to set up a brand new shantytown on the Puerto Joaquín road.

It took forty-eight hours for the police and the National Guard to get them back where they came from, and by that time there were a lot of stories going around about police brutality. Some people accused O’Rourke directly of being involved, but he ignored the accusations and went on hammering at Caldwell. It was said, also, that General Molinas had flatly refused to send in regular army troops against the new squatters, and that the cabinet was fighting regular pitched battles at its meetings.

The second influential voice to take up Caldwel’s accusations was that of Dr. Ruiz, his chief in the health department. Ruiz had been silent for a long time on this matter — cowed, perhaps, by the risk of exposing himself to further charges about the death of the first Señora Vados, or possibly feeling that Sigueiras was now done for in any case.

He wasn’t, by any means, as it turned out. After Dominguez’s revelations regarding Lucas and Estrelita Jaliscos, no further talk had been heard from official quarters about his harboring a wanted murderer, and bit by bit the feeling excited by the Jaliscos girl’s death had died down. Apparently this wasn’t to Ruiz’s taste; now he jumped back in the argument with both feet, reiterating the kind of statement he had made on the witness stand when facing examination by Fats Brown.

This time he piled it on so thick it was a wonder everyone living in Sigueiras’s slum hadn’t long ago suffocated in the foul air alleged to be there. With the three of them — Caldwell, Ruiz, and the bishop — on the job, clearing out that slum was going to have massive support.

One person whose support was less than lukewarm was I.

I made this perfectly clear to a correspondent from Roads and Streets, who’d flown down specially from New York to do a story on the redevelopment project. I took him aside into a bar and stood him a succession of whiskeys while I explained the whole sad situation.

When I was through, he looked at me sympathetically and said in a voice brimming over with emotion and straight rye, “Boy, you’re in a spot, ain’t you?”

After which he flew back to New York, intending to cancel the proposed story.

I was half-expecting Sigueiras to retaliate when Ruiz began to go for him; after all, he must know the stories that were current about Ruiz’s “successful treatment” of Vados’s first wife. Someone presumably advised him against it — which was sensible, because with Dominguez on his side and General Molinas refusing his troops for the eviction he was assured of a respite at least. All he did, in fact, was to invite half a dozen local doctors to go down into his slum and see whether there was in fact a reservoir of disease there.

“If there are sick people,” he said spiritedly, “why don’t people outside catch their diseases from them?”

The doctors found exactly what I’d seen — rickets, vitamin deficiency diseases, and a lot of skin complaints caused by the squalid conditions. But it wasn’t their findings that took the heat off Sigueiras in the end; it was a stern directive from Vados himself. Apparently one of the current items of publicity about Citidad de Vados was that it had the lowest death rate of any city of its size in Latin America, and they were worried in case Ruiz’s assertions might affect the tourist trade. Not that the recent rioting had helped any, of course. Another directive came down about the same time. The university year had ended, and accordingly Professor Cortés was confirmed as acting Minister of Information and Communications. Having sampled his work while he was filling in, I wondered how Vados liked making do with Cortes instead of Alejandro Mayor; however, presumably he was the best available, and since there was no sign of Tiempo returning to life, after all, the government’s propaganda now had no competition.

Well, no effective competition. There were a series of inflammatory news sheets that had sprung up, which were constantly trespassing over the edge of the libel laws and being closed down in consequence — only to start up again the next day or the day after under another name. Most people were resigned to Tiempo’s fate and regarded the news sheets as the best stopgap they could expect.

But there were some others who were getting restive. They pointed out that even though Romero had been suspended from the judicial bench and looked likely to be declared incompetent, no action had been taken to reverse his committal of Cristoforo Mendoza for contempt or to release the impounded equipment belonging to his paper.

And that was not the only matter in which there had been a peculiar delay. As Manuel, the barman, had told me, at this crucial time of the chess championships television was sorely missed, and people were demanding that the arsonists be found forthwith.

It went without saying, of course, that the National Party view was expressed by every one of the succession of news sheets, and these two were the matters at which they hammered again and again: the banning of Tiempo, for obvious reasons, and the failure of O’Rourke to catch the arsonists, to stave off accusations that National Party supporters had been responsible.

It was something of a surprise to me to find out how these news sheets caught on. Surreptitiously printed and distributed, one day’s issue sometimes remained in circulation for nearly a week, being passed from hand to hand, and not only among people who had formerly read Tiempo, but also among people who merely wanted the television service back.

I had my own ideas as to who was responsible for keeping these news sheets going, of course. I’d seen no more of Maria Posador since the evening she dined with O’Rourke at the hotel, and nothing before that for some days. And she was the one who believed that an opposition press in Ciudad de Vados had to be maintained at all costs.

Maybe Vados had been premature to assume that Maria Posador was safer in Aguazul than out of it.

Manuel kept a supply of these miscellaneous news sheets under the bar for interested customers. I was going through one that I’d missed — I think it was calling itself Verdad in its current incarnation — when I found an interesting item which Cortes hadn’t seen fit to divulge on the radio or in Liberdad. I had no reason to doubt it, though. It was stated that el Jefe O’Rourke agreed with General Molinas on the question of clearing away the slums of Vados. It would be asking for worse trouble than they had already. And the much-vaunted plan of mine for redeveloping the ground below the monorail central was nothing more than a governmental pretext to kick out Sigueiras.

Well, that was perfectly true, of course. What shook me rigid was that O’Rourke had supposedly gone on, “And if they try to put this into effect, then we’ll throw Hakluyt out of the country and his plans after him.”