out in tiny bursts throughout the head.
But the lone cry was enough.
‘Is something wrong?’ came a voice from outside, twenty yards away on the
loading dock. ‘Heinrich! Did you call?’
There was no second, no instant, to throw away on hesitation.
David ran to the steel door, pulled it open and raced around the comer of
the wall to the concealed section of the gunwale. As he did so, a guard –
the sentry an the bow of the trawler -came into view. His rifle was waist
high and he fired.
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Spaulding fired back. But not before he realized he was hit. The Nazi’s
bullet had creased the side of his waist; he could feel the blood oozing
down into his trousers.
He threw himself over the railing into the water; screams and shouts
started from inside the cabin and farther away on the pier.
He thrashed against the dirty Rio slime and tried to keep his head. Where
was he? What direction? Where? For Christ’s sake, where?
The shouts were louder now; searchlights were turned on all over the
trawler, crisscrossing the harbor waters. He could hear men screaming into
radios as only panicked men can scream. Accusing, helpless.
Suddenly, David realized there were no boats! No boats were coming out of
the pier with the searchlights and high-powered rifles that would be his
undoingl
No boats I
And he nearly laughed. The operation at Ocho Calle was so totally secretive
they had allowed no small craft to put into the deserted area!
He held his side, going under water as often as he could, as fast as he
could.
The trawler and the screaming Rhinemann-Altmiffler guards were receding in
the harbor mist. Spaulding kept bobbing his head up, hoping to God he was
going in the right direction.
He was getting terribly tired, but he would not allow himself to grow weak.
He could not allow that! Not now I
He had the ‘Tortugas’ indictment!
He saw the pilings not far away. Perhaps two, three hundred yards. They
were the right pilings, the right piersl They … it, had to be!
He felt the waters around him stir and then he saw the snakelike forms of
the conger eels as they lashed blindly against his body. The blood from his
wound was attracting them I A horrible mass of slashing giant worms were
converging!
He thrashed and kicked and fought down a scream. He pulled at the waters in
front of him, his hands in constant contact with the ofly snakes of the
harbor. His eyes were filled with flashing dots and streaks of yellow and
white; his throat was dry in the water, his forehead pounded.
When it seemed at last the scream would come, had to come, he felt the hand
in his hand. He felt his shoulders being lifted,
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heard the guttural cries of his own terrified voice – deep, frightened
beyond his own endurance. He could look down and see, as his feet kept
slipping off the ladder, the circles of swarming eels below.
Eugene Lyons carried him – carried him! – to the FMF automobile. He was
aware – yet not aware – of the fact that Lyons pushed him gently into the
back seat.
And then Lyons climbed in after him, and David understood – yet did not
understand – that Lyons was slapping him. Hard. Harder.
Deliberately. Without rhythm but with a great deal of strength.
The slapping would not stop I He couldn’t make it stop! He couldn’t stop
the half-destroyed, throatless Lyons from slapping him.
He could only cry. Weep as a child might weep.
And then suddenly he could make him stop. He took his hands from his face
and grabbed Lyons’s wrists, prepared, if need be, to break them.
He blinked and stared at the physicist.
Lyons smiled in the shadows. He spoke in his tortured whisper.
‘I’m sorry…. You were … in temporary … shock. My friend.’
I
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39
An elaborate naval first aid kit was stored in the ftunk of the FMF vehicle.
Lyons filled David’s wound with sulfa powder, laid on folded strips of gauze
and pinched the skin together with three-inch adhesive. Since the wound was
a gash, not a puncture, the bleeding stopped; it would hold until they
reached a doctor. Even should the wait be a day or a day and a half, there
would be no serious damage.
Lyons drove.
David watched the emaciated man behind the wheel. He was unsure but
willing; that was the only way to describe him. Every now and then his foot
pressed too hard on the accelerator, and the short bursts of speed
frightened him – then annoyed him. Still, after a few minutes, he seemed to
take a careful delight in manipulating the car around comers.
David knew he had to accomplish three things: reach Henderson Granville,
talk to Jean and drive to that sanctuary he hoped to Christ Jean had found
for them. If a doctor could be brought to him, fine. If not, he would
sleep; he was beyond the point of functioning clearly without rest.
How often in the north country had he sought out isolated eaves in the
hills? How many times had he piled branches and limbs in front of small
openings so his body and mind could restore the balance of objectivity that
might save his life? He had to find such a resting place now.
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And tomorrow he would make the final arrangements with Fjich Rhinemann.
The final pages of the indictment.
‘We have to find a telephone,’ said David. Lyons nodded as he drove.
David directed the physicist back into the center of Buenos Aires. By his
guess they still had time before the FMF base sent out a search. The orange
insignias on the bumpers would tend to dissuade the BA police from
becon-drig too curious; the Americans were children of the night.
He remembered the telephone booth on the north side of the Casa Rosada. The
telephone booth in which a hired gun from the Unio Corso – sent down from
Rio de Janeiro – had taken his last breath.
They reached the Plaza de Mayo in fifteen minutes, taking a circular route,
making sure they were not followed. The Plaza was not deserted. It was, as
the prewar travel posters proclaimed, a Western Hemisphere Paris. Like
Paris, there were dozens of early stragglers, dressed mainly in expensive
clothes. Taxis stopped and started; prostitutes made their last attempts to
find profitable beds; the streetlights illuminated the huge fountains;
lovers dabbled their hands in the pools.
The Plaza de Mayo at three thirty in the morning was not a barren, dead
place to be. And David was grateful for that.
Lyons puffed the car up to the telephone booth and Spaulding got out.
‘Whatever it is, you’ve hit the rawest nerve in Buenos Aires.’ Granville’s
voice was hard and precise. ‘I must demand that you return to the embassy.
For your own protection as well as the good of our diplomatic relations.’
‘You’ll have to be clearer than that, I’m afraid,’ replied David.
Granville was.
The ‘one or two’ contacts the ambassador felt he could reach in the Grupo
were reduced, of course, to one. That man made inquiries as to the trawler
in Ocho Calle and subsequently was taken from his home under guard. That
was the information Granville gathered from a hysterical wife.
An hour later the ambassador received word ftom a GOU Haison that
his’friend’had been killed in an automobile accident. The GOU wanted him to
have the news. It was most unfortunate.
When Granville tried reaching the wife, an operator cut in
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explaining that the telephone was disconnected.
‘You’ve involved us, Spauldingl We can’t function with Intelligence dead
weight around our necks. The situation in Buenos Aires is extremely
delicate.’
‘You are involved, sir. A couple of thousand miles away people are shooting
at each other.’
‘Shit V It was just about the most unexpected expletive David thought he
could hear from Granville. ‘Learn your lines of demarcation! We all have
jobs to do within the … artificial, if you like, parameters that are set
for us! I repeat, sir. Return to the embassy and I’ll expedite your
immediate return to the United States. Or if you refuse, take yourself to
FMF. 77wt’s beyond my jurisdiction; you will be no part of the embassy!’
My God! thought David. Artificial parameters. Jurisdictions. Diplomatic
niceties. When men were dying, am-des destroyed, cities obliterated! And
men in high-ceilinged rooms played games with words and attitudes!
‘I can’t go to FMF. But I can give you something to think about. Within
forty-eight hours all American ships and aircraft in the coastal zones are
entering a radio and radar blackout! Everything grounded, immobilized.
That’s straight military holy writ. And I think you’d better find out why!
Because I think I know, and if I’m right, your diplomatic wreck is filthier