The Five Arrows Part 33

A stream. A well.

He got to his knees, started to crawl deeper into the plowed field, putting another few yards between himself and the road. He crawled into a clump of weeds. The dew on their leaves brushed against his face.

"It's water," he said, and he licked the dew from the weeds. The thirst remained.

Fire. Build a fire and attract a watchman, a farmer, another bus rolling along the deserted road. No, don't build a fire. Cane burns like oil.

Remember what poor old Fielding said? No fire. You'll be roasted alive.

Find water. It's a sugar field. Must be an irrigation ditch around. Find the ditch.

More ground gained by crawling. Then the sleep of exhaustion, no dreams only sleep until the thirst becomes stronger than the exhaustion and then more crawling until ... G.o.d! there is a ditch. Hear it, smell it.

Must be water, couldn't be this much mulep.i.s.s. Now drink your fill and bathe your face and get your head away from the top of the ditch before you fall asleep again and drown in two inches of it. It has a name. It's water.

This time Hall rolled over on his back when he felt that sleep was overtaking him.

There were a million bugs on the mud walls of the ditch. They crawled on Hall's hands, on his face, and one column of intrepid bugs slithered into his mouth and got caught in his throat and he was sick. He moved away from the mess, tried to sit up. He could see a mound of rocks near the road. With all his remaining strength, he started to crawl toward the mound.

It took him two hours to negotiate the twenty yards between the ditch and the rocks. He lost count of the number of times he collapsed to his face and fell asleep on the journey. All he knew was that when he woke up, he had to get to the rocks. He could sit on the rocks and wait for a truck or a bus to pa.s.s by. Then he could hail the driver.

But when he reached the fence, he saw that the mound was on the other side of the road. Fall asleep in the middle of the road and the next truck that rolls along crushes you like a roach. _Putas y maricones!

Maricones y putas!_ Blood will run in the streets of the city when I get up, the brown blood, the black blood, the blue blood. _Arriba Espana_ in a pig's eye. You mean _Deutschland Erwache_, senor, and come a little closer, you with the yoke and the five arrows on your cap, come a little closer and get your filthy head bashed in. G.o.d, when I get up I'll kill them I'll kill them if these chills ever go away I'll kill them I'll kill all the baby killers when these chills go away oh G.o.d look at the baby killers marching through Burgos with the holy men shaking holy water on their lousy heads. Wh.o.r.es and f.a.ggots! f.a.ggots and wh.o.r.es! I'm getting up!

He was asleep when the army lorry roared by and then stopped down the road, brakes screeching, rubber biting into macadam.

The sergeant's brandy did no good. Neither did the fresh water they poured on his face, the brandy they rubbed into his wrists. All this they had to tell him later.

He remembered nothing about the lorry. The bus he remembered; the driver, the flowered-cretonne slip cover on the driver's seat, the farmer, joining the kid in _No Pasaran_. He remembered jumping from the bus, crawling for water, giving up the ghost when the bugs crawled into his throat. And the rocks. There was that mound of rocks.

Now there was a narrow bed in a small room. A man's room, obviously a man's room. Desk, lounging chair, worn gra.s.s rug. For some reason Fernando Souza was sitting in the lounging chair. Another man was standing near the bed, looking down at Hall, his fingers pressed to Hall's pulse.

"Is that you, Souza?" Hall asked, and the night clerk of the Bolivar left the chair and joined the doctor.

"You will be well now," Souza said.

"The pulse is coming back," the doctor said, to Souza. He let go of Hall's wrist. When he went to the desk, Hall could see the military trousers beneath his white coat.

"Can you talk, Don Mateo?" Souza asked.

"I think so. Where am I? What day is it?"

The doctor went to the door. He held a whispered conversation with a soldier who was waiting on the other side of the door. Then he took Souza's chair. "Such cursing," he laughed. "When they brought you in, Senor Hall, you had no pulse, you had the temperature of cold beer, and your heart had just about three beats left. You were biologically more dead than alive. But I swear, before I gave you the first ampule of adrenalin, the curses were pouring out of your lips like the waves of the ocean. How do you feel now?"

"Very tired."

"Are you hungry?"

"I don't know."

"You'll be able to eat soon. I've been feeding you through a needle for seven hours. How would you like a steak?"

"What time is it?"

"Five o'clock," Souza said. "I've been here with you all afternoon, Don Mateo."

"What's this 'Don' business?"

Souza smiled. "I am glad to see that you are making jokes, _companero_."

"Where in h.e.l.l are we?"

Souza and the doctor took turns in telling the story. The soldiers had picked him up in the road some ninety miles from San Hermano. More dead than alive, they put him in the lorry and rushed him to their garrison.

There, while the commandant examined his papers, the doctor, Captain Dorado, moved him into the commandant's room and gave him his first shot of adrenalin.

"Was it a heart attack?" Hall asked.

"No," the doctor said. "You were drugged."

Hall listened to the doctor's technical description of the drug which had felled him. He had heard of it before. It worked like an overdose of insulin. Burned up the sugar, then the energy in the body, and then blew the fuses. Something like that, anyway. Another hour without adrenalin and it would have been curtains. That second pot of coffee and the soft laughter in the kitchen. d.a.m.n their eyes, that's where it happened. Then eight hours of lying in the commandant's bed, cursing, sleeping, getting needles of adrenalin, needles of energy, needles of the stuff that makes pulses beat to the right measure.

"Are we tiring you?"

"No, Captain. I'd like something to eat, though."

"I ordered some hot broth."

"Thank you. I'm glad you're here, Fernando."

"The commandant called me," Souza said. "He found your address through Pan American Airways."

"Oh." The letter. It had gone to Pan Am for forwarding. Then it was still safe.

"I will return in a few minutes," the doctor said. "I want to see about your broth."

Souza waited until the doctor was out of the room before he spoke.

"Providence was with you," he said. "The commandant here is a Tabio man.

He called me at once to find out who you were. Another man might have called your Emba.s.sy first."

"Have they called the Emba.s.sy yet?"

"Not yet, _companero_."

"What happened to the men the _maricon_ met at the pier?"

"We have them under sharp eyes. They went first to Jorge Davila's home.

Then they went to the country. They are in Bocas del Sur at the estate of Gamburdo's brother, the cattle raiser. The _maricon_ left them there.

He is now in San Hermano with Ansaldo. They were to be with Don Anibal this afternoon."

"And the girl?"