The Honorary Consul Read Online Free Page B

loose surveillance in the border region since the days of the guerrilla fighting, if only for their own protection: there were cases of men who had been dragged home to Paraguay across the Paraná to die. There had been an exiled doctor in Posadas... Because he was a man of the same profession the doctor's example had been present often in Plarr's mind since the plans for the entertainment were first disclosed to him. This telephone call to his apartment could not be justified except in a case of great urgency. One death among the entertainers—by the rules they had set themselves—was to be expected and justified nothing.
           He said, "I don't know what you are talking about. You have the wrong number." He replaced the receiver and lay looking at the telephone as though it were a black and venomous object which would certainly strike again. It did two minutes later, and he had to listen—it might be an ordinary patient's call. "Yes—who are you?"
           The same voice said, "You have to come. He may be dying."
           Doctor Plarr asked with resignation, "What do you want me to do?"
           "We'll pick you up in the street in exactly five minutes. If we are not there, then in ten minutes. After that be ready every five minutes."
           "What does your watch say?"
           "Six minutes past two."
           The doctor put on a pair of trousers and a shirt; then he packed a briefcase with what might be required (a bullet wound seemed the most likely trouble) and ran lightly down the stairs in his socks. He knew the noise of the lift was audible through the thin walls of every flat. By two ten he was standing outside the block and at two twelve he went in again and shut the door. At two sixteen he was watching a second time in the street and a two eighteen he was back inside. Fear made him furious. His liberty, perhaps his life, seemed to lie in hopelessly incompetent hands. He knew only two members of the group—they had been at school with him in Asunción—and those who share one's childhood never seem to grow up. He had no more belief in their efficiency than he had when they were students; the organization they had once belonged to in Paraguay, the Juventud Febrerista, had effected little except the death of most of the other members in an ill-advised and ill-led guerrilla action.
           Indeed it was that very sense of amateurism which had persuaded him to become involved. He hadn't believed in their plans, and to listen to them was only a mark of friendship. When he questioned them about what they would do in certain eventualities the ruthlessness of their replies seemed to him a form of play acting. (They had all three taken minor parts in a school performance of 'Macbeth'—the prose translation did not make the play more plausible.)
           Now, as he stood in the dark hall, watching intently the luminous dial of his watch, he realized he had never for a moment believed they would reach the point of action. Even when he had given them the precise information they required of the American Ambassador's movements (he had learned the details from Charley Fortnum over a Long John) and supplied them with the drug they needed, he still didn't believe that anything would really happen. Only when he woke that morning and heard Léon's voice, "The show goes on," did it occur to him that perhaps these amateurs might after all be dangerous. Was it Léon Rivas who was dying now? Or Aquino?
           It was two twenty-two when he went outside for the third time. A car swerved round the block and stopped, the engine running. A hand waved to him.
           As far as he could tell in the light of the dashboard, he didn't know the man at the wheel, but his companion he was able to guess at in the dark by the line of the thin beard which outlined the jaw. It was in a police station cell that Aquino had grown his beard and had begun to write his poetry, and it was in