The Five Arrows Part 30

"I became the right party," Margaret said. "The soy is growing over a fortune in manganese."

"What happened to the young engineer?"

"He's in the States. I got him a scholarship in a good mining school.

When he gets out, he'll be able to run the works down here."

"You don't miss a trick, do you?"

"Darling," she laughed, "my grandfather didn't come up from a plow on his muscles alone. But why don't you ask me why I'm not mining my manganese now?"

"I suppose that's where the politics comes in," he said.

"Now you're catching on. You see, Matt, anyone who didn't know the score down here might start mining like mad. There's a war on, the Germans have grabbed most of Russia's manganese fields, and Russia had a practical corner on the world's manganese supply. It's almost worth its weight in platinum today."

"Then why in the h.e.l.l don't you cash in?"

"Because I intend to live for a long time after the war, darling. And I'd like something for my old age. Not inflation-swelled war dollars, but real hard money. That's where the politics comes in, Matt. It costs like h.e.l.l to start a mine. I'd have to dip into my reserves to get it started, or get partners and let them pay for the works. But they wouldn't do it for nothing. They'd wind up with an unhealthy share of the profits. This is my baby, and under certain circ.u.mstances I can run it by myself and make money at it. But those circ.u.mstances are determined by the politics here."

"By that," Hall said, "I take it you mean Tabio's politics?"

Margaret was not smiling now. Her eyes had narrowed down to sharp slits, and although she talked as fluently about the mine and Tabio as she had earlier discussed soy beans, her voice had taken on a sharp, metallic edge. "I most certainly do," she said.

"Then you agree with Fernandez and the Cross and Sword crowd?"

"Now don't tell me," she said, wearily, "that they are all a bunch of dirty fascists."

"I'm not telling you a thing. I'm here to get the lowdown, not to hang labels on everyone in San Hermano."

"Thank G.o.d for that," she said. "I can give you the lowdown, if you really want it."

"That's what I'm here for."

"I'm so sick of these smart-aleck pundits who are so quick to hang the fascist label on everything they don't like," Margaret said. "I'm not afraid of labels. I'm only interested in the facts. I'm interested in my manganese operation. I'm interested in protecting what I have. And I'll fight against anyone who tries to steal what's rightfully mine."

"You've been threatened?"

"Not directly. That's the h.e.l.l of it. If not for me, or someone else with as much money to risk as I'm risking, this manganese would be useless to everyone. But I'm not going to sink a fortune into the mine only to have the cream taken away from me."

"By Tabio?"

A slight smile touched Margaret's lips. "Not exactly," she said. "I'm a little more rational than Fernandez and his friends. It's not Tabio I'm afraid of, darling. It's the thing he's started. You don't open a few thousand schools all over a backward country and then expect the people to remain the same. It's not only the kids who go to these schools; grown-ups pack the same school houses every night. People don't want things they don't know about. But when they go to school they start learning about a million things they'd like to have--and none of these are free. They begin to want modern houses and radios and refrigerators and pianos--you have no idea what they begin to want, Matt!

"The schools are only the beginning. Once the miners learn how to read and write, the unions come along and flood them with printed propaganda about higher wages. They tell the miners that higher wages mean higher standards of living."

"Don't they?" Hall asked.

"Not for the mine owners, dear," she said. "Higher wages mean lower profits. And when you run a mine, the idea is to keep the profits up.

That's where the politics come in, Matt. You don't pa.s.s laws--as the Popular Front has--forcing employers to bargain with the unions without making the unions so powerful that they can and do elect whole blocs of union deputies and senators. And then these blocs push through laws on hospitalization and social security and death benefits that cut into a mine owner's profits nearly as much as the wage increases.

"In other words, Matt, it all boils down to dollars and cents. Tabio and his ideas are great vote-catchers--but the costs are enormous. And these costs don't come out of the pockets of the people who vote for the Popular Front candidates."

Hall watched her in fascination as she spoke. This was no mystic Pilar Primo de Rivera, he thought, no hyper-thyroid hysteric falling on her knees in the cathedral and then rushing out with blood in her eyes and emptying a Mauser full of bullets into the warm bodies of housewives shopping in the Madrid slums. Margaret's voice had not risen by one note. Her hands were calm, she was still relaxed in the settee. If not for the hard sharpness of her voice now, she might still be discussing soy-bean culture or anything else as remote from her true interests.

"Fernandez and the Cross and Sword crowd might be hysterical," Margaret said, "but they are on the right track. The government has to change quickly, or it will be too late for all of us. The Cross and Sword crowd aren't really natives, you know. They're Spaniards. They got the scare of their lives when Tabio's Spanish counterparts took over in Spain."

"But why? They live here. Spain is an ocean away."

"Money has a way of crossing oceans," Margaret said. "They all had plenty invested in Spain. If Franco hadn't come along, Vardieno and Davila and Quinones and a lot of other men you haven't met would have been wiped out."

"Isn't Franco a fascist?"

"Labels don't mean a thing. I think democracy is the phoniest label in the world, Matt. When it means a stable government, like we used to have back home before the New Deal, I'm for it. But when it means the first step on the road to collectivism, I'll take any Franco who comes along to put an end to it. That goes for the Cross and Sword crowd, too. Or am I all wrong?"

Hall laughed, softly. "That's a rhetorical question," he said. "Let's skip the rhetoric. Then things are really bad down here, aren't they?"

"They couldn't be much worse. I know it sounds harsh, but I think the best thing Tabio could do for his country would be to die. With Gamburdo in the Presidencia, you'd see a return to something resembling sanity down here. He has a very sound approach."

"But wouldn't he be too late? What could he do about the school system, for instance?"

"The Cross and Sword crowd want the schools closed down at once. They want education returned to the Church. But Gamburdo is a good politician," Margaret said. "He'd keep the schools open, but he'll clean out the Ministry of Education from the very top down to the personnel of the village schools. He'll simply turn it over to the Jesuits. They won't have to open their own parochial schools; they'll control Tabio's."

"Have they enough teachers?"

"Gamburdo told me that if they need teachers they'll import them from Spain."

"How about the labor laws?"

"A law is no better than its enforcement. That's what I learned in law school and it still goes. Can you imagine what would happen to the Wagner Act if Hoover were back in the White House?"

"You don't need too much of an imagination to figure that one out," Hall said.

"Of course," Margaret said, "Gamburdo will need more finesse than a Hoover." There was the little matter of the arms everyone knew were in the hands of the miners in the north. There was also the still painful memory of the one-day general strike called by the transport workers and the longsh.o.r.emen when the Supreme Court delayed its decision on the validity of the Tabio labor codes. Gamburdo, she explained, would have to plan his acts like a military strategist. "Because unless he does, he will need a military strategist to pull him out of the hole."

"You don't mean a civil war?"

That was exactly what Margaret did mean. But Gamburdo had a plan for averting such a war, or, if it had to come, to guarantee the victory for the forces of sound government when the issue was drawn. He would begin gradually by restoring to their army commissions the old officers trained in Segura's military college. This he would do before attempting to circ.u.mvent the labor laws. "Then, when the war ends in Europe, a lot of good professional military leaders will be out of jobs," she said.

"Gamburdo plans to give them jobs."

"How about the troops? Will they be loyal to the new order?"

Gamburdo had provided for this, too. The army would have the best of everything; it would be made more attractive than life as a miner or a soy-bean cultivator. "But a boy will have to have the O.K. of his priest before he will be taken in. And what a priest learns at confession is nothing to be ignored. The Church will keep the unreliable elements out of the army." Once he had an army, Gamburdo would then be ready to restore sound government in the nation.

"He's a clever guy," Hall said. "I had a hunch he was the coming strong man on the continent when I applied for an interview."

Margaret thought that this was very funny. "Don't be a child," she laughed. "He won't admit to anything like this for publication."

"That doesn't matter. What counts in my business is that I'll be on record as the first American to interview him, and that I'll get the credit for discovering him before his name is a household word."