Two of the children on the pallet were now sitting up, staring at the visitors with wide, frightened eyes. Segador grinned at them. His eyes were growing accustomed to the darkness. "Go back to sleep, niños," he whispered. "We will play with you when you awake."
The kids ducked under the woolly coverlet, hiding their heads.
"Sit down," the shepherd said. "If you are friends, I will offer you the hospitality of this table." He started to roll a cigarette out of a fragment of newspaper.
"There are cigarettes in my pocket," Hall suggested. "Cuban cigarettes. Perhaps you would like one."
The shepherd rose from his own bench without a word, found the cigarettes, put two in the mouths of Hall and Segador. He struck a rope lighter, started their cigarettes. Then, still without speaking, he finished rolling his own cigarette and lit it. "If you are fifth columnists," he said, "I spit on your cigarettes." There was no rancor in his statement; it was a polite expression of simple logic.
His wife returned in a few minutes. She was with a nervous little white-haired man who clung to the waistband of his alpaca trousers. He carried a shiny alpaca jacket in his free arm—this and the steel-framed glasses on his ancient nose were his badges of authority.
"This is Bustamente the Notary," the shepherd said.
Bustamente fingered his glasses. "Yes," he said, alive to the importance of the moment. "I am the Notary." He squinted down his nose at the two men.
"Major Diego Segador, of the Republic. And this is my colleague, Major Angel Blanco, of the Cuban Army."
"They fell from the sky," the shepherd said. "Like fifth columnists."