"I can be at the Bolivar in about fifteen minutes. Meet me in the lobby?"
"All right. But hurry. And just in case you've forgotten what I look like, I'll be wearing a red carnation."
He became part of the growing multi-directional parade in the streets. Nightfall had brought colored torches to the hands of many of the Hermanitos, and hundreds of new huge portraits of the four leaders of the United Nations. There was a new pattern to the street festivities. Now whole groups of Hermanitos, each marching behind a picture of one of the four statesmen, made their way through the crowds to the embassies of the United Nations and then to the Plaza de la Republica, where they paraded their signs and their sentiments in front of all the government buildings and the Presidencia. After that, the marchers joined the milling groups of celebrators who just seemed to move around in slow circles, singing, cheering, loudly wishing a long life to Anibal Tabio and the United Nations.
The darkened Plaza was packed, torches in the hands of hundreds of the crowd bringing more light to the ancient square than had been seen there since the nation had been forced to begin conserving its fuel. Hall cut through the crowds toward the Bolivar, too excited to sense his fatigue. This is a night I shall long remember, he thought, this is the night I will tell my children about if I ever have any children. This is the night that I saw the power of the common people, the night I saw democracy take to the streets of a nation's capital and tell the world that fascism's day of cheap triumphs is done. This is the night of the meek who shall yet inherit the earth.
Through the shoulders of the crowd, he could see Jerry's red hair. As he drew closer, he saw that she had two little girls in her arms. The children were crying wildly, the tears choking in their throats and coursing down their contorted faces.
"There, there," Jerry was saying to them, "everything will be all right. You're only lost. We'll find out where you belong." But the strange foreign words only added to the terror in the frightened hearts of the girls.
"What happened?" Hall asked Jerry.
"They're lost. I was afraid they'd get trampled or something, Matt."
He spoke to the kids in their own language, soothing, silly words. Then he took them in his arms while Jerry dried their tears with a perfumed handkerchief. Between sobs, the little girls told Hall that they had slipped out of the house to see the fiesta and had been having a swell time until the crazy lady swooped them up, talking crazy words and keeping them from going on their way.
"Do you know where you live?" he asked them. They pointed toward their own house. "We will take you there. And don't call the señorita a crazy lady, little ones. She is your friend."