"And the other?"
"The other, compañeros, is Fernando Rivas."
"Rivas?" Eduardo's dark, good-looking face grew puzzled. "Is he in this too?"
"Wait. I should bring Compañero Hall up to date. You don't know Rivas, Mateo. He is a queer bird. He comes from a good Republican family in Madrid. A very good family. Republican since before the First Republic. This Rivas, this Fernando, he was good. Under Alfonso, he got a job in the Foreign Office. They sent him to Havana as an attaché in the legation. Even then he was a good Republican. But something happened to the man when the war started. He didn't fight for the fascists, but ..."
"Tell him about his wife," Rafael said.
"That's what I think did it. He had a British wife, and she had high-life aspirations."
"I think I understand," Hall said.
"I don't have to go into the details. There is no time for that, anyway. The point is that he had to go to Spain last year, and he came back filled with loathing for everything he saw. This I know for a fact. First, he started to sit home alone every night and get drunk, and then he began to write a memoir about what he saw. He didn't think anyone would ever see it. He still doesn't know that anyone but himself has ever seen it. I got it from his servant one morning a few weeks ago. She is one of ours. We photographed it and she put it back before he got home that night."
Eduardo passed a box of inexpensive cigars around. "The week before that," he said, "I ran into Rivas at a café in Matanzas. He was sobering up after a drinking bout. I tried to avoid him but he followed me out of the place. He was crying. He called himself a son of a whore mother and a traitor to his honor and his people and carried on like a fool. Then he started to tell me about his wife's lover—we've known all about that for months, but Rivas had just found out—and I became filled with disgust for the creature. I shook him off and left him standing in the street crying like a whipped dog. I hate weaklings."
"I get it," Hall said. "But when you saw his diary, you started to change your mind, eh?"