"But isn't Gamburdo in the Popular Front?"
"Gamburdo is different," Smith said. "He has different ideas, and he can't be pressured by the bolos."
"I'm doing a story on Gamburdo for a magazine back in the States. You get around. Tell me more about Gamburdo. I've got him down as the coming man on the continent. Am I half cocked, or is he really hot?"
Orville Smith discussed Gamburdo, Tabio, the political scene. He talked about the politicos, about their ideas, about the gossip which followed them in their careers. Carefully prodded by Hall, he spoke fluently for nearly two hours. It was a very revealing monologue. It told Hall how Orville Smith had spent his three years in San Hermano. Week-end parties at the estates of wealthy Spanish planters. Dinners, cocktails, high masses, weddings, fishing trips with the Vardienos and the Fernandezes and the Gamburdos. Info straight from the horse's mouth.
Tabio the tool and or agent of bolshevism. The better element. How social legislation would push taxes up and cut down returns on American investments. Vardieno gives lovely parties on his island. No, not many lately. No oil for the boats, hard enough to get it for his narrow-gauge Diesel locomotives. Fine lad, young Quinones; made the golf team at Princeton. The Vardieno girl in the Press Bureau? That would be the one who went to finishing school in the States. She just started in at the Bureau for some experience. Cross and Sword? Oh, I know the pinkos back home would call it fascist. It's not, really. Conservative, for free enterprise and private ownership. All the better-element folks belong or support it. Do I know any labor leaders? No, never met one. Did I ever spend a week-end in a small village hotel? No, thank you, the roaches are bigger than sparrows in the sticks.
Hall thought about the art of diplomacy. You take a kid from the FFV's and at an early age you wrap him in cellophane and send him off to some nice, prophylactic boarding school, well-heeled white Gentiles only, thank you, High Episcopalians preferred, and only nice clean thoughts, none of them less than a century old, are gently swished against the cellophane until some of them seep through by osmosis. He meets only the sons of the better element and outside of an adolescent clap he picks up on one wild week-end with some of the boys in New York he has no real problem until he's eased out of prep and then he has an idea he wants to go to Harvard but the family prevails and he does time at Princeton, nearly makes varsity football but a high tackle in a practice scrimmage changes his mind, and then he is ready for his place on the board of the mill but someone—a nice girl of fine breeding, no doubt—puts another idea in his head. So he goes to Georgetown, fills out a lot of nasty forms, and then, voilá!, the young monsieur arrives in Paris as Third Secretary and dreamily sends that first letter home to the folks: Hello Folks, here I am in Gay Paree learning how to be an Ambassador.
And then in Paris, Hall thought, listening to Orville Smith, your young Third Secretary naturally gravitates to his French equivalents, the young bluebloods who were reared in French cellophane and got the same ideas, only in French, in their own versions of Princeton and Groton. The better element meets the better element, and he makes factual, intelligent reports. The Popular Front falling into hands of the bolos. This he learns at a week-end party on Flandin's yacht. The Croix de Feu and the Cagoulards are fine, conservative forces. Only the pinkos call them fascists, but Bertrand de Juvenal, the fledgling ambassador's pal, knows otherwise. Sit-down strikes, forty-hour week, vacations with pay—he puts them all down in his reports; communist, of course. Got the lowdown on the beach at Cannes just the other day. Daladier is the man to watch. Yes, he is in the Popular Front. But Daladier's different. He's like Monsieur Laval, the French Calvin Coolidge. Fine force for sensible government. There will be no war, Munich has settled that. Got the lowdown from Flandin himself. Germany will be defeated. Spent a most fascinating week-end with General Weygand. Marechal Pétain is man of the hour. Marechal Pétain will make France another Verdun. Vichy wants to be friends with Washington. The Marechal indignantly denies, in private, that that was a Nazi salute you saw in the newsreels, sir, he says he was just waving at the cameramen. But Bertrand de Juvenal does not deny, and Laval does not deny, and Daladier weeps in his collapsed house of cards. And then comes the transfer to San Hermano at a better rating.
Smith pointed to the suburbs of San Hermano ahead of them. "We made good time," he said. "We'll be in the Embassy in ten minutes."
"Good going. You can drop me at the Bolivar, if you don't mind."
"Not at all, old man. But say, why don't you drop by for a spot of lunch with the old man and the boys at the Embassy? We'd love to have you with us and, besides, the old man will probably want to see for himself that you're in one piece."