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Authors: Eric Ambler

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BOOK: Doctor Frigo
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Glad later, because the evening became wonderful. No goodbyes. But as I was leaving she gave me a wrapped present. ‘Something for the journey,’ she said.

Have now opened the wrapping. The present is a book, as I had known by the feel of it, but of an unexpected kind. It is the first volume of an old four-volume edition of the correspondence, personal and diplomatic, of the Empress Maria Theresa published in Vienna.

It puzzled me at first because the title is in German, which, as Elizabeth knows, I cannot read. Then I opened it and saw that Maria Theresa’s personal letters had been written mostly in French sprinkled with Italian, and that they had been reproduced in the original by the publishers.

As I leafed through the book I found a page marker. A three-line passage had been underlined.

Je vous embrasse de tout mon coeur; ménagez-vous bien, adieu caro viso.

Je suit la votre sponsia delectissima.

I felt myself deeply moved. Dear, sweet Elizabeth. How tender of her, and how thoughtful, to send me off on this wretched journey, not only with a declaration of her love and concern for me, but also with a promise!

For that is what it undoubtedly is. The letter of Maria Theresa’s to which those words were added as a postscript was written to her betrothed on the eve of their wedding. She had adored him for years and, now that all those horrible obstacles to their marriage had been overcome, she was reaffirming her devotion. This was the prospective wife to her husband to be, opening her arms in joyous anticipation of the union she had for so long craved. Delightful!

And then I began to wonder about that lucky bride-groom, Francis Stephen, Duke of Lorraine, into whose shoes I was, metaphorically speaking anyway, now being invited to step. What manner of man had he been?

I have just looked him up, and wish now that I hadn’t.

He was not without some merits it seems. He was gay, handsome and spirited, a great huntsman and possessed of a peculiar ability to deal effectively with financial matters. In most other respects, however, he was a nincompoop.

He fancied himself as a statesman, but allowed himself to be blackmailed and browbeaten into giving his own duchy of Lorraine to the French. He was told and believed, that unless he did so, Maria Theresa could not become Empress. As a sop to his pride they promised that he should one day inherit Tuscany.

He fancied himself as a soldier and leader of men, and went off vaingloriously brandishing his sword to smite the Turks. When the Turks promptly and thoroughly defeated him he went scurrying back to Vienna complaining that he was ill and blaming his staff for the disaster.

The Viennese despised him because they thought he was a Frenchified coward. The French despised him because they had successfully cheated him of an ancient inheritance and because he had submitted to Viennese bullying.

He was almost illiterate and, unless scrutinizing a set of accounts or flying hawks in the hunting field, generally foolish and incompetent. Throughout their married life, both before and after she became Empress, he was continually unfaithful to Maria Theresa.

She saw through him completely, gave him court appointments in which he could do no harm, and continued to adore him. When he died, almost thirty years after she wrote that postscript, she was shattered by her grief.

I have just read it again.

Dear Elizabeth. It was a wonderful thought and I am deeply grateful to her, but I don’t think that I shall take the book with me. It is, after all, a single volume of a set which I’m sure is rare. I dare not risk losing it. Besides, I am no good at all in dealing with financial matters and have never been able to understand accounts. I must remember to tell her.

SUNDAY 8 JUNE

Listened to morning radio news from Fort de France.

The coup seems to have begun. Reports of serious clashes last night in capital between students and militia. Some fire-bombing and looting by shanty-town mobs.

Father B is on the march.

Midday news gave further details. ‘Left-wing elements’ in army reportedly siding with student demonstrators. Militia protecting central areas of city, port installations, airport, power station and ‘other key points’. Some street-fighting. President absent at OAS meeting in Bogota but government claims ‘firm control’. Capital radio station still on the air but broadcasting only music. Cable reports coming out describe situation as ‘confused’.

Does not sound promising. Telephoned Les Muettes and asked Uncle Paco what was going on.

My concern amused him. ‘My dear Ernesto, there’s nothing to worry about. It is not the situation that is confused but the radio newsroom at Fort de France. Have you packed?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good. Don’t be late.’

That was all I could get out of him. Lunched at Chez Lafcadio. Some Frenchman – Talleyrand was it? – once said that he always arranged to dine well during a coup d’état, as it helped pass the time agreeably. My motive for doing so probably cruder. As I am going to be travelling by air that may have been the only chance I will have of eating decently today.

EN ROUTE FROM GUADELOUPE

Nearly midnight. First chance I have had to note our progress – if that is what we are making.

Arrived early at Les Muettes by taxi. Paco’s fears about army truck unfounded. A minibus came. Curtained windows and Commissaire Gillon sitting beside the driver.

Our party – Don Manuel, Doña Julia, Uncle Paco and me – left at 18.45 hrs and was driven to the airport; not to the normal departure building though, but round by a side road along the perimeter to a gate in the fence on the far side. There was a small twin-engined plane waiting, plus an army scout car and a guard of soldiers in camouflage uniform with automatic rifles.

Paco’s protest about the baggage allowance had failed, and no wonder. There were only eight passenger places in the cabin. Gillon got in with us. Our baggage was stacked by the three unfilled seats behind.

I sat next to Paco. Just after we took off he gave me a wad of tattered banknotes. ‘That’s two thousand,’ he said; ‘at the present rate equal to a hundred dollars US. I don’t suppose you’ll be needing it, but you may as well have it with you.’

The flight to Guadeloupe took ninety minutes. When we landed we taxied to an area normally reserved for the French air force.

That long runway at Raizet, the airport outside Pointe-à-Pitre, is peculiar in that one end of it is only a few metres from a main road. It was busy with Sunday-night traffic when we arrived, a fact which made the presence of the armed troops which surrounded the plane as soon as we stopped somehow incongruous. What were they supposed to be protecting us from? Reporters or Sunday drivers?

Off the runway there was a line-up of big air force transports and one civilian DC8. It was towards the latter
that we were shepherded by Gillon and a man in police uniform who was there to meet him. I couldn’t see the name of the airline to which the DC8 belongs. Definitely not Air France – some Caribbean charter company. Our transfer from the small plane took less than three minutes. Two soldiers handled the baggage which was again placed in the cabin with us. Gillon came aboard, but not to stay. He had a brief conversation at the door with Uncle Paco, shook Don Manuel’s hand, kissed Doña Julia’s and, with a nod to me, left. Through a window I saw him join the policeman in an airport police radio truck.

We are in what is normally, I suppose, the first-class section. Seat arms have been removed so that we can lie down if we wish, and possibly sleep. No air hostess – just the flight crew and a mestizo steward, Spanish-speaking, who looks like an ex-policeman discharged, and still resenting the injustice, for excessive brutality.

Uncle Paco, when he had settled himself, spoke to me across the aisle. ‘All well,’ he said, ‘and more or less according to plan. There’s been a little trouble with air-traffic control at the other end and they don’t want us to take off until that’s settled, but it shouldn’t be more than half an hour.’

‘What’s our flying time?’ I asked.

‘We can’t take the direct route. Don’t want to get clearances to fly through any foreign air space. About five hours they say. Why?’

‘I’d like Don Manuel to get some sleep. I’ve got tablets for him.’

‘Well, better wait a bit. He won’t take them until we’re airborne.’

We waited on the ground for two hours.

After the first hour Paco got out and went off to find the reason for the delay. He returned after a while looking amused.

‘We’ll have to wait a bit longer,’ he said to Don Manuel.

‘Air-traffic control still?’

Paco grinned. ‘That was just a fairy-tale. It seems that there are rather more candidates for the flight out the other end than had been anticipated. They’ve had to find an extra plane.’

‘Where have they chosen to go?’

‘Jamaica has agreed to accept them for twenty-four hours as transit passengers. They’ll pick their individual destinies there.’

‘Can’t we have something to eat and drink while we wait?’

The steward was prevailed upon to hand out the boxes of food provided for the journey. Each contained two stale ham sandwiches, a banana and a bottle of gassy lemonade.

Just after 23.00 hrs the steps up to the plane were taken away and the door shut. Five minutes later we took off.

Gave Don Manuel two 100 mgm capsules sodium seco-barbital. Gave Doña Julia and Paco one each. Took one myself. There is no drinking water on board as, according to the steward, the guard refused to let the airport service truck approach us. Have had to make do with more of the lemonade.

HOTEL NUEVO

MUNDO

ROOM
202

MONDAY 9 JUNE

It has been a disturbing twenty-four hours. Don’t know why I should find this remarkable. Coups d’état are intended to disturb. What I really mean perhaps is that seeing my own country again for the first time in over twelve years would have disturbed me, even without the coup.

Still dark when we approached the coast. Don Manuel
and Doña Julia had slept on the flight. Paco and I had dozed. The hitches began while we were still in the air. We had started preparing ourselves for the ceremonial arrival – Doña Julia in one of the toilets and Don Manuel shaving himself with a rechargeable electric razor – when the pilot sent back word to say that we were being refused permission to land and threatened with AA gunfire if we tried to do so.

Paco lumbered forward to discover why. It turned out that on the ground they were asking for proof of our identity. We had to fly out to sea again and circle for twenty minutes while the jumpy AA gunners were given new orders and the equally jumpy control-tower personnel persuaded to stop talking nonsense and switch on the landing lights.

Our pilot, presumably unnerved by the threat of gunfire, made a bad landing, bouncing the plane down on the runway with sufficient violence to burst open two of the galley lockers. The reverse thrust that followed produced a cascade of plastic cups and plates from the open lockers and a volley of oaths from the steward. Doña Julia, shaken at first, now lost her temper. It was outrageous, she cried, that a head of state should have to suffer these indignities upon entering his country, and showed an utter contempt for protocol.

Don Manuel told her quite sharply to be quiet and pull herself together. At least, he said, we were safely on the ground and if it was protocol she was worried about we would all, soon enough, be up to our eyes in it.

We were. The area in front of the airport building was now ablaze with floodlights and as the plane swung into it I saw a battery of cameras and a podium with microphones. Steps were quickly wheeled to the door and the steward, abandoning his attempts to dispose of the galley debris by kicking it under the seats, opened up.

First to come aboard was Santos wearing a dark suit and tie and looking, despite the wall of damp heat now moving in from outside, both cool and calm. Behind him was a man
in the uniform of an army colonel. He was looking less calm. Santos introduced him as the officer commanding the troops who had so efficiently seized the airport on Saturday night.

Clearing his throat first, the colonel explained that he was there, as senior officer on the spot, to assure His Excellency, the new President, of the loyalty and devotion to his person of the entire army, and that all there was secure and under control.

Don Manuel gave him a pleasant smile. ‘Have the representatives of the foreign press arrived, Colonel?’

‘Yes, Excellency. One planeload direct from Miami and another which came via Antigua early today.’

‘Were
they
threatened with gunfire before being allowed to land?’

‘No, Excellency.’ Sweat poured off him. ‘That error of judgement in the case of your plane arose from excessive zeal on the part of the gunnery officer and the change in the plane’s expected time of arrival. The original orders were too rigidly adhered to. There was also a lack of coordination. The officers concerned have been severely reprimanded.’

‘Good.’

From then on he completely ignored the colonel. It was left to Santos to report a rather more serious instance of excessive zeal on the army’s part.

This concerned the Presidential Palace.

While most members of the militia had quietly disposed of their uniforms, left their weapons in the barracks armoury and proceeded to make themselves as inconspicuous as possible, the militia unit stationed at the Presidential Palace had decided to defend it to the death. As the commander of this particular unit had known that he was on Father Bartolomé’s personal list of those to be strung up publicly as soon as captured, the decision had not been entirely heroic. He had probably counted on being captured by the army after putting up a token resistance.
Unfortunately, the militiamen under his command had taken his last-stand order seriously and had fought with determination. An army assault team had been called in. In their winkling-out of the defenders they had used considerable force and made rather a mess of the Palace. In particular, two stone pillars supporting the main balcony, on which new presidents had always stood to be proclaimed and then acclaimed by the populace, had been damaged by high explosive. The main interior staircase and state apartments had also suffered. Scaffolding was being erected even now to make the balcony safe, but it would be some days before the Palace could be considered habitable. Meanwhile, the second floor of the Hotel Nuevo Mundo had been commandeered to accommodate the Presidential suite.

BOOK: Doctor Frigo
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