Mask of the Andes. Jon Cleary
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helped her to her feet. She was struggling to get her breath, her pale face turning slightly blue. Taber pushed her down on to the nearby seat, took a tablet from a tin in his pocket and forced it between her lips. ‘Take this, it’ll slow down your pulse. I’ll try and get you some oxygen. There’s a hotel over there – they’d have a cylinder—’
She clutched his arm, shook her head. ‘Don’t – leave – me!’
He looked around. The old men were getting painfully and awkwardly to their feet, dusting themselves off and looking bewilderedly around as if searching for lost dignity: the Indian women were moving in a tight group across to join the growing crowd outside the bank. Three policemen, each blowing his whistle in a loud cheep of authority, came running from different directions; a truck, horn blowing, came lurching round the plaza, pulled up in front of the bank and disgorged a dozen soldiers. People were appearing from everywhere, but now, with the arrival of the soldiers, the small crowd outside the bank began to disintegrate. The group of Indian women suddenly about-turned and trotted back to sit once more at the foot of the statue of the Liberator. The old men stood in their own group across at the bank; an image sprang into Taber’s mind of photos he had seen of delegates to international conferences in the thirties, formally dressed old men with tight worried faces who saw the coming of the end of their world. The high school students had come out of the café, chattering among themselves but, unlike teenagers Taber had seen elsewhere, minding their own business and making no attempt to move down towards the bank. People, criollos and Indians, lined the edges of the plaza or stayed stiffly where they were in the gardens; but no one made a move towards the bank now that the soldiers had arrived. The clerk who had staggered out of the bank still sat on the pavement, swaying back and forth, holding his face; against the wall of the bank Taber saw for the first time the crumpled body of a policeman. A car, siren wailing, came into the plaza and juddered to a sharp stop behind the military truck. Three officers got out and hurried into the bank.
Taber helped Carmel to her feet, putting his arm round her. Something blew against his feet; it was one of the leaflets tossed away by the bank robbers. He picked it up, held it crushed in his hand as he began to help the still gasping Carmel across the square.
‘My hotel’s not far from here. They’ll have an oxygen cylinder.’
They walked slowly, she leaning on him like an old woman. People watched them curiously, but no one stepped forward to ask if they could help. Carmel was still fighting for her breath, but Taber, his arm round her, could feel the gasping slowly subsiding.
It was perhaps three hundred yards to Taber’s hotel but it took them almost ten minutes to reach it. It was a ten-year-old concrete building that looked uncomfortably out of place among its old stone, tile-roofed neighbours; even its name, the Dorchester, was a brash piece of bravado that had not quite come off: the two middle letters of the neon sign did not work. It was owned and run by a Bulgarian and his wife and was, Pereira had assured Taber, absolutely the best hostelry in town.
Taber helped Carmel up the steps into the small lobby, sat her down on one of the bright yellow plastic-upholstered couches against the bright blue wall. The owner, a stout bald-headed man with gold-rimmed glasses and an air of being constantly harassed, came across from behind the desk with a small cylinder of oxygen.
‘The altitude, senor? Or excitement – I heard the shots—?’
‘Both,’ said Taber, watching to see that Carmel did not gulp in too much of the oxygen. He took the face-piece away from her and handed the cylinder back to the owner. ‘That’s enough. The senorita will be all right now. Will you get me a taxi?’
The hotel owner turned to call the Indian boy out from behind the desk, but stopped as the front door swung open and a police officer came in. The officer walked straight up to Taber and held out his hand.
‘The leaflet, senor.’ He was a short, thin-faced mestizo in his late forties, a man drugged by addiction to authority; he quivered now as if he were high on it, his eyes wide as he glared at Taber. ‘Hand it over at once.’
Taber looked down, saw that he still held crumpled in his hand the leaflet he had picked up in the plaza. He smoothed out the paper, held it up to read it. The officer made a grab at it, but Taber jerked it away. He was aware of the tension in the lobby, of the Indian boy half-crouched behind the desk and the owner holding the oxygen cylinder in front of him like a bomb he did not want; out of the corner of his eye he saw Carmel gasping no longer but now holding her breath, and beyond her he was aware of the owner’s angular wife standing unmoving in the doorway to the office. But he was not going to allow himself to be pushed around like some misbehaving tourist by this arrogant little policeman. He was here at the invitation of the government and the police had better get the message right at the start.
He read the leaflet: Death to the Jackboot! The People’s Revolutionary Committee … There was more in the same strain; he had read it all before, in three or four other languages. This one was in Spanish and Quechua; he wondered which language would get the greater response. He screwed up the leaflet and handed it to the officer.
‘It is an offence against the law to have such literature.’
‘You flatter it calling it literature. I picked it up in the plaza. I was just helping to keep the city clean.’
The police officer evidently did not appreciate irony. ‘You gave a gun to one of the terrorists.’
‘I gave him back his own gun. If I hadn’t, his friends would have shot me.’
Carmel had stood up, put her hand on Taber’s arm. She did not understand the Spanish dialogue, but she had made her own position clear: she was backing up Taber. He felt grateful to her, suddenly warming to her, and he put his own hand on hers. They stood in front of the police officer like a couple about to be married.
‘Who reported me?’ Taber wondered which of the dozens of people in the plaza had tried to curry favour with the police; none of them would probably dare to inform on one of the locals, but there was no danger in putting the finger on an outsider.
‘It is of no concern,’ said the officer; for the first time he looked unsure of himself. ‘Your name?’
Taber gave it. ‘I am already registered at your headquarters. I am an official guest of your government.’
‘The senorita?’
‘Senorita McKenna. She is a guest of Senor Alejandro Ruiz Cordobes, staying in his house.’
The officer’s face twitched as if he had been stung; or as if the drug of authority had suddenly worn off. He stuffed the leaflet into a pocket of his tunic, saluted perfunctorily, then turned on his heel and without another word went out of the lobby. The hotel owner let out a loud sigh; it sounded as if he had pressed the valve on the cylinder he still held. He looked at Taber.
‘The police chief himself, Captain Condoris. He has never been here before. Let us hope he does not come back.’
‘He won’t,’ said Taber, wondering why the police chief had not sent a junior officer after him. Or had Condoris thought he, Taber, had been an accomplice of the robbers and had had thoughts of making a spectacular arrest himself? He’s made a fool of himself, Taber thought, and he’s not going to like me from now on. ‘Get your boy to call a taxi, Senor Vazov.’
When the taxi arrived, Taber took Carmel out, put her in and closed the door. He leaned in the open window. ‘Go straight back to the Ruiz’s. No sightseeing, at least not till tomorrow.’
‘Will things be all right again by tomorrow?’
‘They’ll be all right again in an hour or two. But it would be better if you didn’t go out on your own again today, just in case there’s some more shooting.’
‘Will there be more of that?’
‘I don’t know. Sometimes in these countries the soldiers or police shoot up a suspect’s home just as a warning. They order everyone out of the house, then let fly. It’s bad luck if someone