A green light on Lobo's desk began to flicker. "It's the file room," he said. "I guess they have the Ansaldo dossier." He called the lieutenant on the inter-phone, told him to bring in the Ansaldo dossier.
The dossier was not very long. It told the story how, in the winter of 1938, a prominent Cuban Falangist in the best of health had suddenly taken to bed with a "serious complaint." His family announced to friends that they had sent to Spain for a great doctor, one Varela Ansaldo. They said Ansaldo cured the Cuban, to be sure, but he also had long private sessions with the leaders of the Falange at the Spanish Embassy and, before he returned to Franco Spain, the Falange in Cuba had undergone a complete shake-up of its leadership. There were pictures of Ansaldo, but alone and in plain clothes.
"Are these the only pictures?" Hall asked.
"Perhaps not. We took about three thousand feet of movie film from the Inspector General of the Falange for Latin America when he tried to escape to Spain on a C.T.E. ship two years ago. Let's look at them, old man." He pressed a key in his inter-phone box. "Pablo," he barked, "set up those Villanueva films in the machine. I'm coming in in ten minutes."
"I didn't think of that film," Hall confessed. "Every time you were supposed to show it to me, something came up, remember?"
Lobo was barking into the inter-phone again. "Teniente, scare up two cold bottles of champagne for the theater, will you? We have a thirst that is killing us."
"Are you screening the film in a theater?"
"No. It's a crime laboratory the F.B.I. installed for us. The whole works. Wait till you see it, Matt. It's just like Hollywood. Colossal!"
"And the champagne?"
"That's my own contribution. I'll be damned if I can stop drinking champagne in the middle of a party just because Johnny Green Moon drags me out. Come on, let me show you the joint." He led Hall on a ten-minute Cook's tour of the crime laboratory, his patter a slightly off-color imitation of an American tourist guide's spiel. A small beaded screen had been pulled down from the ceiling, facing two chromium-and-leather lounge chairs. When the lieutenant brought in the champagne in two ice buckets, General Lobo signaled the soldier in the tiny projection booth to start the film.