Dickenson drew a deep breath, exhaled slowly and audibly. "What's it all about, Matt?" he asked, softly. "Where does San Hermano come in?"
"I don't know a mucking thing yet. All I know is that it stinks to high heaven. Listen, Dick, I'm not crazy. You know that. In Washington they act as if I'm crazy or worse when I try to tell them." Hall put his hand to the twitching right side of his face as if to keep it still. His outburst had completely dried his throat. He went to the sideboard, threw some ice cubes into a giant glass, poured soda over the ice.
The Governor watched him swallow the contents in huge gulps. "Better sit down, Matt," he said. "You'll blow a valve."
"I'm all right," he said. He put the glass down on the floor, ran the handkerchief over his neck. "There's one thing I do know, and it's killing me. I know the Falange is in this. It's all I have to know. I remember reading a fascist paper in jail in San Sebastian. There was a big map on the back page, a map showing Spain as the center of the Spanish World. An artist had superimposed the five arrows of the Falange over the face of Spain. The article under the map said that while one of the arrows pointed to Madrid, two pointed to the Philippines and the others pointed to Latin America. They weren't kidding, Dick. When the Japs marched into Manila they decorated the Philippine Falange for the fifth-column job the Falangistas performed for Hirohito. And there are twenty Falangist cells in Latin America for every one cell they had in Manila on December 6, 1941.
"And why not, Dick? It's the Germans who've always run the Falange. Today they run Spain. And they also run the Exterior Falange set-up. Maybe Falangismo as a philosophy is phony as all hell, and maybe its creed of Hispanidad, with all its blah about Latin America returning to the Spanish Empire, is just as phony. Maybe it doesn't make sense to us gringos. I'll grant that. But it is a nice Nazi horse on the dumb Spanish aristocrats who do Hitler's dirty work in the Americas. In German hands it's one of the dynamics of this war. I've seen it in operation, and I know. It's the gimmick that makes rich Spaniards fuel and hide submarines in the Caribbean—you know that for a fact yourself. It's the new amalgam which makes 'em look to Holy Mother Spain as the core of a new empire, it's ..."
"But granting all this, Matt, why must you go to San Hermano?"
Hall swallowed some soda. He put the glass back on the floor, grabbed the San Hermano Imparcial from the Governor's hands. Slowly, he crushed the paper and held it in front of Dickenson's face. "Do you know who publishes El Imparcial?" he asked. "I'll tell you. It's a fascist named Fernandez. In San Sebastian, during the war, he strutted all over town in a Falange officer's uniform browning his nose with all the top-ranking lice, the Germans, the Italians, the Franco crowd. He was there for months, making radio speeches and public appearances and getting cramps in the right arm from holding it up in the stiff-arm salute. I saw him a dozen times, if I saw him once."
"José Fernandez? I met him at a conference in Rio. He seemed like a pleasant enough chap," the Governor said.
"They're all pleasant. They can afford to be. You never met Ribbentrop and Otto Abetz, Dick. They were the most charming men in Europe before the war. But listen, last week in Havana I looked at a collection of pictures taken from the files of the chief of the Falange delegation for the Americas. There was one picture of a banquet held by the Falange in San Hermano late in 1936. It was a secret affair, only insiders and leaders. And there, on the dais, was Licenciado Enrique Gamburdo, big as life."
"Gamburdo!"