was American coffee too and, on a bench under the window, Chilean white wine stood in buckets of ice.
In keeping with the liberal persuasion of the newspaper proprietor, there were no servants. Lucas accepted a glass of cold wine and briefly conversed with a man who wanted to display his familiarity with London. He talked with a couple of other guests before catching sight of Inez. He picked up a bottle of wine and took a clean glass. He’d poured two glasses of wine as he felt a tap on his shoulder. ‘Inez,’ he said. He had been about to use the wine in order to interrupt the conversation he’d seen her having with a handsome man in unmistakably American clothes.
‘You have been here for ages, and did not come across to speak,’ she said. It was such a coy opening that she could hardly believe that she was using it.
He gave her a glass of wine and looked at her. She was wearing a simple black dress with a gold brooch. A patent-leather purse hung on a chain over her shoulder.
She sipped and, for a moment, they stood in silence. Then she said, ‘You were deep in conversation?’
‘Yes,’ Lucas said. ‘An American from the embassy. He used to live in London.’
‘O’Brien. Mike O’Brien.’
‘Yes, that’s right,’ Lucas said.
‘CIA station head for Spanish Guiana, and maybe all the Guianas.’
‘You don’t mean it?’
She smiled.
He turned so that they could both see the mêlée. ‘Well, he seemed a decent enough chap. You think he was sounding me out?’ When she didn’t answer he said, ‘Well, yes, you’re right. We should assume that he heard someone like me was coming.’
As if aware that they were talking about him, Mike O’Brien smiled at Inez from across the room.
‘He knows you,’ said Lucas.
‘My name is Cassidy. It goes back many generations here in Guiana. My great-grandfather Cassidy was the first judge. But O’Brien likes to joke that we are both Irish.’
‘Does he know …?’
She turned to him. ‘It’s difficult for a foreigner to understand but many of the people in this room know that I am one of the people who handle statements for the MAMista command.’
‘The MAMista is an illegal organization.’
‘Yes, it is. But the Benz government officials tolerate me and others like me.’
‘And you get invited to drink with the Americans and the CIA chief smiles at you. I don’t get it.’
‘It is expedient. Channels of communication remain open between all parties. Sometimes we give warnings about … things we do.’ She didn’t want to say ‘bombs we plant’. Neither did she want to tell him of the hostages that were sometimes taken: government officials that they held for ransom. Inez Cassidy had handled such matters. It was not a way to make yourself popular. She finished her wine, drinking it too quickly. She put the glass down.
‘How do you know the secret police are not biding their time and collecting evidence against you?’
‘Our secret police don’t bide their time. They send a murder squad to gun you down without witnesses.’
‘But the Americans? Do they know what you do?’
‘The American government is not wedded to the Benz regime,’ she said simply.
‘That sort of expedience,’ said Lucas. He could see she did not want to say more.
The music was switched off as five chairs were placed in position at the end of the room. Five musicians climbed up on to the chairs. They produced a chord or two on the electric guitar and a rattle of maracas. A sigh of disappointment went up from those guests who had been hoping that the Americans would produce a pop group or some American-style music.
‘Mother of God,’ said Inez, regretfully noting it and adding it to her total of blasphemies that would have to be confessed. ‘I really can’t endure another evening of that.’
‘Are you here with anyone?’ Lucas asked.
‘Spare me a sip of wine,’ she said, taking his glass from him and drinking some. The gesture was enough to answer his question. She was not here with anyone she could not say goodbye to.
‘Shall we have dinner?’
‘Yes, I’m starved.’ It was the sort of archness she despised in other women. It ill suited a politically committed woman of thirty. She looked at the people dancing. The man who had brought her was dancing close with the editor’s daughter who’d just left college in California. It was a modern lambada: danced to the rhythm of the samba. She was a good dancer but she was pressing close and smiling too much. The man would be a good catch: a young and handsome coffee broker. He’d inherit plantations too when his father died.
‘Italian food?’ He’d noted the neon sign for the San Giorgio restaurant as he was arriving here, so he knew exactly where it was.
‘Wonderful,’ said Inez. She looked again at the dancers. Inez had been in her twenties before the plumpness and spots of youth had disappeared. The sudden transformation had been intoxicating but she’d never completely adjusted to the idea of being a beautiful woman. It must be much easier for pretty young girls like that one; they grow up learning how to deal with men. For Inez the prospect of another relación was not only daunting but funny.
‘What are you smiling at?’
‘I’ll tell you later,’ she said. ‘You leave now. Don’t say goodbye to anyone. Drift out slowly. I will be downstairs in ten minutes’ time.’
He nodded. It was better that they were not seen leaving together. The music changed to a habanera, a very old Cuban rhythm in which gringos often detected the very essence of Lat in American amor. Over the fast tempo, words were sung very slowly.
Lucas knew that listening carefully to trite lyrics was one of the symptoms of falling in love, but the words – a tryst under a star-studded sky – seemed curiously apt. He avoided Angel Paz and Chori, who were drinking, eating and talking and seemed oblivious to the music. He edged out into the corridor.
As he got there he saw Mike O’Brien leaving, preceded by a short dark man who was frowning and looking at his watch. Lucas did not want to see O’Brien. He stopped and pretended to study the notice board. There were small ‘For Sale’ notices: microwave ovens, cars and TV sets being disposed of by Americans on their way home. In one corner of the cork board the front page of tomorrow’s edition of The Daily American had been posted.
‘Benz Representative at White House Meeting’ shouted the headline over a story about the Benz government’s young Finance Minister who was in Washington asking for money, tanks, planes and military aid and anything he could get. The reporter thought the US President would demand a crack-down on Spanish Guiana’s drug barons as a condition for aid.
Lower down on the page under the headline ‘State of Emergency Laws to be Renewed’, an editorial said that the ‘Orders in Council’ by means of which the Benz government ruled were expected to be renewed when the current term expired in two weeks’ time. Meanwhile the Prime Minister controlled the Council of Ministers, Council of State, Religious Affairs, Public Service Commission, Audit and Privy Council. The Minister of Finance controlled the Customs, Tax Department, Investment Agency, Economic Development and Planning and the Department of Computers and Statistics. And ‘Papa’ Cisneros, the Minister of Home Affairs, from the fifteen-storey building that dominated the skyline, controlled the National Police, Municipal Police, the Federalistas, the Prisons and Places of Detention, Immigration, Labour, Municipal and Central Security, Weights and Measures and the Fire Service.
In effect, said the editor, the country was in the hands of three men, all of them close to the President, Admiral Benz. The Constitution forbids legislation without the approval of democratically