MAMista. Len Deighton

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ later. And I will be on the plane when you go south,’ she promised.

      He held her tight and murmured, ‘I love you.’

      They say it’s the proximity of the Equator that does it.

      The policeman at the door glanced at him, his ticket and his passport and then nodded him through. The porter opened the door of an old Chevrolet cab and put the bags alongside the driver. ‘Take me to the statue of President Ramírez,’ said Lucas. His Spanish was entirely adequate but the cab driver was more at home in the patois. It took two more attempts before he was understood. Lucas was determined to master the curious mixed tongue. He said, ‘Is the traffic bad?’

      ‘Are you Italian?’

      ‘Australian.’

      It meant nothing to the driver but he nodded and said, ‘Yes, I recognized your accent.’ He sighed. ‘Yes: police blocks all round the Plaza. Checking papers, looking in the trunk, asking questions. I will avoid the Plaza. Traffic is backed up all the way to the cathedral.’

      ‘What is happening?’

      ‘Those MAMista bastards,’ said the driver. ‘They put a bomb in the Ministry of Pensions last night. They say people in the street outside were wounded. I hope they catch the swines.’

      ‘Your politics here are very complicated,’ said Lucas tentatively.

      ‘Nothing complicated about tourist figures being down sixty-eight per cent on last year. And last year was terrible! That’s what those mad bastards have done for working men like me. Visitors down by sixty-eight per cent! And that’s the official statistic, so you can double that.’

      The taxi was making a long detour. Cabs did not usually bring tourists along this part of the waterfront. Here the militant residents of sprawling slums had declared them to be independent guerrilla townships. Painted warnings and defiant Marxist proclamations marked the ‘frontier’. Beyond that the police armoured carriers closed their hatches and, at night, watched out for home-made petrol bombs.

      The Benz government refused to admit that there were any of these spots that foreign reporters called ‘rebel fortresses’. Regularly they proved their point by sending in the army to do a ‘house-to-house’. Soldiers in full battle order brought tanks, water cannon and searchlights. They closed off a selected section and searched it for arms, fugitives and subversive literature. Sometimes the army took reporters along to show them how it was done. The last such demonstration had encountered a rain of nail bombs and Molotov cocktails: two soldiers and a Swedish journalist had been severely burned.

      But for many people in Tepilo the slums – and their rebel townships – did not exist. That side of town was not on the route to any of the good beaches or the swanky nightclubs. Even the people who had to drive that way used the elevated freeway that took them high above the barriada. Providing they kept the window closed, they didn’t even notice the stench that arose from it.

      But Lucas didn’t keep his window closed. He looked down and saw the beggars and the diseased, the cripples and the starving. There were hollow-faced skeletons wrapped in rags and hungry babies that never stopped crying. Sprayed on the rusty iron sheets, and broken pieces of dockyard crates, were revolutionary slogans. Here and there flew a home-made flag, spared from precious cloth to signal their anger. It was too bewildering. Lucas looked away. On each side of him Cadillacs and Bentleys, Fords and Fiats raced past, no one sparing a glance for that netherworld.

      When they reached the water the people strolling along Ocean Boulevard did not seem to worry about the people of the barriada. Neither did the shopkeepers in the cramped little alleys of Esmeralda where ramshackle slum tenements had been artfully transformed into a chic shopping district. Here the latest in Japanese video cameras, genuine furs of almost extinct carnivores and gold and enamel bracelets – ‘replicas of pre-historic Indian designs’ – could be bought tax-free for US dollars, Marks or Yen.

      The cab stopped and Lucas got out at the statue of President Ramírez, ‘indomitable founder of Spanish Guiana’s freedom’. There was a smell of damaged fruit and vegetables. The market square was empty except for men rolling up the sun-blinds and stacking away the market stalls, and a couple of nuns picking through a heap of discarded produce.

      The address he wanted was a callejón crowded with shoppers and tourists. Some had been taking photographs of the vegetable market. Some were coming and going between the much photographed statue and Tepilo’s notorious ‘sailor’s alley’, a dark little sidestreet of tiny bars, loud music and bright neon signs that had become a place where prostitutes plied their trade. Here were men, women and small children catering to all tastes. Other tourists were looking for the ‘silver alley’ where it was said noble families offered priceless antiques for discreet and immediate cash sale. Some wanted to see the military checkpoint that marked the extreme edge of the villa miseria that the guerrilleros were said to control.

      Lucas made his way along the crowded alley, pushing through the pimps, beggars and salesmen who grabbed at his sleeve and jacket. The archway at number fifty-eight bore a painted sign, Gran Hotel Madrid. Lucas stepped over the outstretched legs of a sleeping doorkeeper. On the wall a sign made from shiny stick-on letters said ‘privado’. Lucas went past the sign and into a cobbled courtyard at the rear of an old three-storeyed building.

      The sunlight in the courtyard was coloured green by a tree that reached higher than the roof. Around the courtyard fretwork wooden balconies jutted out at each level. Numbered doors indicated a collection of small dwellings. Everywhere there were big pots from which rubbery plants and glossy flowers came crawling up the rainwater pipes and hanging over the balconies. One would think a town perched on the edge of the jungle would have enough greenery without potted plants, thought Lucas. At ground level a black woman was emptying a pail of soapy water into the open drain. She stared at Lucas. This was not a hotel, nor a whorehouse, she told him. Lucas nodded amiably and she told him it was forbidden to take photographs here. He smiled. She stood arms akimbo and watched him ascend the narrow staircase to the third floor. She was still looking at him after he’d rung the doorbell and looked down over the balcony. He raised his hat.

      From inside came the sound of a heavy bolt being drawn. The door opened a little and a man’s face appeared in the gap. It was not welcoming.

      ‘My name is Ralph Lucas.’

      The man said nothing. Without haste he opened the door to allow Lucas inside, where Lucas noted the smell of cooking and, from somewhere nearby, the sound of a radio tuned to Spanish pop music. When the door was closed and bolted again, the hall became dark. Now the only light came from the dim bulb in a tiny plastic conch shell fixed to the ceiling.

      The man pushed past Lucas, opened another door, and led the way into a room that faced the front of the building. It was bright and sunny, its window providing a view of the rooftops and the cathedral. The room was furnished like a study. There were shelves of books and a desk upon which pens, inks, pencils and a large sheet of pink blotting paper were neatly arranged. In the corner a small refrigerator whirred loudly. Propped in the corner alongside it stood a folding canvas bed. Lucas regarded the bed with interest and decided it was where he would probably sleep that night.

      Another man was there: a slim tanned fellow, about twenty, with long wavy hair and steel-rimmed glasses. He wore jeans and scuffed tennis shoes. He seemed ill at ease and was toying with a glass of beer. Lucas guessed him to be another foreign visitor.

      The man who had let him in was powerfully built, dark-skinned and about forty years old. He was wearing white trousers, now somewhat wrinkled, and a red-checked shirt. СКАЧАТЬ