The old Constitution of the Liberators gave way to a series of native dictators who waxed rich as the servants of the foreign owners of the metals and minerals discovered under the nation's soil, of the foreign business men who never saw San Hermano but built vast abattoirs near the wharves where skinny Hermanitos earned a few pennies a day for slaughtering and then loading endless herds of native cattle in the dark holds of foreign ships.
They were ruthless men, the dictators who sat in San Hermano as pro-Consuls of the foreigners and the landowners, ruthless men who, for their share of the profits of the foreigners, of the endless rivers of pesetas the landowners sent to Spain, maintained armies of cutthroats to put down any attempt at rebellion against the new existing order.
The last of these dictators to sit in San Hermano was General Agusto Segura. More than a decade had passed since Segura had died in bed and a junta of professors and miners wrested the control of the nation from Segura's henchmen. There had been little bloodshed when the Junta took over; after thirty years, the Segura regime, or what was left of it, had just collapsed of its own rottenness.
Hall thought of Segura, and the state he had ruled, and then, again thinking about Tabio while he stared into the shadows of the darkened Plaza de la Republica, Hall remembered Tabio's quiet remark about his country's having been in the twentieth century for barely a decade. A slim decade, which began with a world in confusion and was now ending with a world in flames. But if the country weathered these flames, it would be because Tabio, instead of running for the Presidency after the revolution which swept out the remnants of Segurista power, had chosen to serve as Minister of Education for nearly ten years. Hall was willing to stake his life on this, ready to bet that the phenomenal free educational system Tabio had set up for children and adults would, in the final analysis, be one of the nation's chief bulwarks against fascism.
He changed his clothes and went out for a walk through the crooked streets of Old San Hermano before turning in. Many lights were burning in the fourth floor of the Presidencia, the floor on which the President had his apartment. Military guards were standing listlessly at the entrances to the gilded building.
Hall walked along the Plaza until he came to the Calle de Virtudes, which led to a little café on the street opposite the rear entrance of the Presidencia. It had no windows but giant shutters which were folded against the wall when the café was open for business. The café itself stood on a corner, the sidewalks on both sides of the place covered with tables and chairs. Wooden lattice fences, painted a bright orange, screened the tables from the pedestrian's section of the sidewalk. Inside, near the bar itself, two boys with guitars were playing and singing the tragi-comic peasant songs of the south.
He took a sidewalk table, ordered a meat pie and a bottle of beer, and then went to the small hotel next to the café to buy a sheet of paper, an envelope, and an air-mail stamp. He asked for a telephone book, looked up the names under Gomez, copied the address of one Juan Gomez, and returned to his table. There he bought a newspaper from a boy peddling the latest edition of the evening. The front page carried a story about Ansaldo: the distinguished visiting medico was to spend the next day conferring with local doctors who had been treating the President. In one of the back pages, under Arrivals, there was a line about the illustrious author and war correspondent Dr. M. Gall who reached San Hermano by Clipper; Dr. Gall was the noted author of The Revenger, even now being produced in Hollywood.
The paper was put aside for the meat pie. When he was done with the food, Hall pushed his plates away and spread his sheet of lined writing paper on the table before him. He called for some ink, filled his fountain pen, and wrote a letter in Spanish to a "Dear Pedro."
It was a rambling, innocuous letter which started out with family gossip about a forthcoming marriage of a cousin, the marriage prospects of the writer's eligible daughter, the letter received from Cousin Hernando who was happy on his new ranch and whose good wife was expecting another child soon. Then the letter went on to say that "I suppose you have read in the Havana papers that our President is ailing. Today there arrived in our city the distinguished Spanish doctor Varela Ansaldo. He is to treat the President. Perhaps I am very stupid, but is he not the surgeon who operated so well on the throat of your dear Uncle Carlos?" The letter then continued on for another page of family gossip and regards and requests that Pedro embrace a whole list of dear cousins and aunts. It was signed, simply, "Juanito."
Hall read the letter twice, sealed it, and addressed the envelope to Pedro de Aragon, Apartado 1724, La Habana, Cuba. Pedro de Aragon was a myth. Mail at this box was picked up by Santiago Iglesias, an officer of the Spanish Republican Army whom Hall had met again in Havana. Iglesias did at one time have an uncle named Carlos; the uncle had died on the Jarama front from a fascist bullet that tore through his throat and killed him instantly. Hall had arranged to write to Iglesias under names chosen from the phone books of different cities if the need arose. He scribbled the name and address of Juan Gomez on the back of the envelope, left some money on the table, and walked back to the Plaza. There he dropped the letter in a mailbox and continued on his way to the Bolivar.