Dr. Varela Ansaldo was traveling with his assistant, a young Dr. Marina, an American nurse named Geraldine Olmstead, and a Dominican passport. This much Hall was able to observe at the ground station, before the passengers for San Hermano and way points boarded the Stratoliner.

The Dominican passport interested Hall. He knew that the passports were for sale at an average price of a thousand dollars. Refugees starved and borrowed and sold their souls to scrape together a thousand dollars for one of the precious passports. When you met a Spaniard with a new Dominican passport, you seldom had to ask questions; you knew you were meeting a man whose life was not worth a nickel in Spain. And yet, in the day-old issue of Time the Clipper had flown in from Miami, the biography of Ansaldo carried no hint of the doctor's being in disfavor with Franco. Nor did the biography mention the physician's Dominican citizenship.

Hall read the Time biography again. Scrupulously impartial during the Spanish Civil War, Ansaldo took no sides, remaining at his post as a healer under both nationalist and loyalist flags. With the end of war, Ansaldo accepted a Chair offered by the Penn Medical Institute in Philadelphia, assuming new position in October, 1939. The story went on to describe some of the new operations Ansaldo had since performed.

Hall unbuckled his seat belt. He had a single seat on the left of the plane, the third seat from the front. Ansaldo's nurse had the seat in front of his. She sat across the aisle from Marina and Ansaldo, who shared a double seat. Hall sat opposite a pink-cheeked Dutchman of sixty who shared a seat with a very dark Brazilian. A State Department courier had the seat in front of the nurse. The other passengers included the wife of an American Army officer, some Panair officials, two Standard Oil engineers, and some quiet Latin American government officials on their way back from Washington.

Most of the passengers, now that the plane had gained altitude, were trying to sleep. The little Hollander was wide awake, virtuously and happily wide awake with the morning heartiness of a man who has been going to bed and rising early all of his life. He beamed at Hall. "I see you and I are the only ones who had a good night's sleep, Mr. Hall." Then, laughing, he explained that he had recognized Hall from the picture on the jacket of his book before he had even heard his name announced by the steward on boarding ship. His accent was slight, but definite.

"Yesterday," he said, gesturing at Hall's seat, "Miss Prescott—a charming lady, by the way—and today another American writer. Ah, well, the damn wheel turns and comes up twice with the same value. Oh, I forgot. My name is Wilhelm Androtten."

Hall extended his hand across the aisle, gripped the hand Androtten offered him. It was a pudgy little hand, soft and white and pink.

"Yes," Androtten sighed. "I have quite a hell of a story of my own to tell about enemy actions. I too have been an actor in the drama. But of course I'm not a writer. Ah no, Mr. Hall," he waved a stiff little index finger back and forth in front of his glowing face, "I'm not going to suggest that you write my story. To me it is important as hell. But to the world? It is not as dramatic as the sinking of the Revenger. A thousand times no!"

The Hollander pulled an immense old-fashioned silver cigarette case from the pocket of his brown-linen suit. "Have an American cigarette? Good. Yes, mine is only the story of how the damn Japanese Army drove a poor coffee planter off his estates and then out of Java. And that is all, sir, except that as you may have guessed—I was the planter. Now I am, so to speak, a real Flying Dutchman, flying everywhere to buy coffee from the other planters and then flying everywhere to sell it again. But I try to be jolly as hell and to bear my load like a Dutchman should, Mr. Hall."

"That is a story, Mr. Androtten," Hall said. "A real one." The strong light above the clouds rasped his sleep-hungry eyes. He put on his dark glasses, leaned his head back against the padded roll of the reclining chair.

"Do you really think my story is worth while, Mr. Hall? I would be honored as hell to tell you the whole story with all the damn facts, if you desire. I ... Are you getting off at Caracas?"

"No. I'm sorry. I go all the way through to San Hermano."

"Good, Mr. Hall. I go to San Hermano myself. Do you know the Monte Azul bean, sir? It's richer than the Java. A little Monte Azul, a little Bogota, some choice Brazilians—and you have a roast that will delight the rarest palates. Yes, San Hermano is my destination. San Hermano and the damn Monte Azul bean."

Hall gave up trying to stifle a series of yawns. "I'm sorry," he said. "I guess I didn't get enough sleep after all."

"Please sleep," Androtten said. "We'll have plenty of time to talk in San Hermano."

"Sure. Plenty of time." Hall opened the collar of his shirt, sank into a light sleep almost at once. He slept for over an hour, waking when the Standard Oil engineers in the rear seats laughed at a joke told by the Army officer's wife. The steady drone of the engines, the continuing sharpness of the light made remaining awake difficult. Hall closed his eyes again but there was no sleep.

Androtten and the Brazilian had found a common tongue, French, and in the joy of this discovery had also discovered a common subject. The Brazilian was holding forth on the exotic virtues of one rare coffee, the huge diamond on his finger ring catching and distributing the light as he gestured. Androtten was trying to describe the various blends of Java.

Hall thought of Ansaldo and Marina and the nurse. Marina was about thirty, too dapper, too fastidious, his plaid sports jacket fitting too snugly over his rounded hips. On boarding the plane, the nurse had brushed against his arm, which he withdrew with a subconscious gesture of revulsion. Hall watched him now, buffing his nails with a chamois board. Ansaldo had also awakened, was reading one of the pile of medical magazines he had carried into the plane. The nurse was a blank, so far. All he could see of her was the soft roll of strawberry hair. She had a few faint freckles on her nose and full lips and it was ten to one that she was from the Midwest. But a blank.

The older doctor, Ansaldo, was about fifty, and had a stiff correctness that Hall had noticed immediately in the airport. He wore glasses whose horn rims were of an exaggerated thickness. His iron-gray hair, cut short and combed straight back, had an air of almost surgical neatness. He had the long horse face of an El Greco Cardinal, and behaved even toward his assistant and his nurse with a detached politeness. Marina's obvious and fawning devotion to the older man seemed to bounce off Ansaldo without effect. Hall put him down as an extremely cold fish, but a cold fish who would bear watching for reasons Hall himself could not quite define.

When the plane stopped in Caracas for refueling, Ansaldo, carrying a thick medical journal with his finger still marking his place, took a slow walk in the shade, Marina following at his heels like a puppy. Hall got out and lit a cigar and when he noticed the nurse looking at the exhibit of rugs and dolls set up in a stand at the edge of the airfield he walked to her side. "Indian-craft stuff," he said. "If you'd care to, I'll be your interpreter."

The girl took off her dark glasses, looked at Hall for a moment, and then put them on again. "I can't see too well with these darn things," she laughed. "Do you think I could get a small rug without giving up my right arm?"

"Your right arm is safe with me around, Madam. Perhaps you never heard of me, Madam, but in these parts I'm known as Trader Hall. Matthew Hall."

"You're hired. My name is Jerry Olmstead."

They sauntered over to the stand. The afternoon sun ignited the fires in her hair. She was taller than most women, and though her white sharkskin suit was well creased from travel, Hall could see that she had the kind of full shapely figure which made poolroom loafers whistle and trusted bank employees forget the percentages against embezzlers. Feature for feature, Jerry Olmstead's was not the face that would have launched even a hundred ships. Her forehead was too high, and it bulged a bit. Her blue eyes were a shade too pale for the frank healthiness of her skin. Her nose was straight and well shaped, but almost indelicately large. When she smiled, she displayed two rows of glistening healthy teeth which were anything but even and yet not uneven enough to be termed crooked.

Hall helped her select a small rug, agreed at once to the price asked by the Indian woman at the stand, and then had a long discussion in Spanish with the peddler about the state of affairs at the airport before giving her the money. "You see," he said to Jerry, "unless you bargain with these Indians, you're bound to get robbed." The rug cost Jerry something like sixty cents in American money.

"You'll be able to pick up some wonderful beaten-silver things in San Hermano," Hall said. "I'd be glad to show you around when we get there. In the meantime, can I get you a drink?"

"I'd love one."

The only drinks for sale in the canteen were cold ginger ale and lemonade. They had the ginger ale, and Hall learned that this was the girl's first trip out of the United States. "It's all so different!" she said, and Hall thought he would grimace but then the girl smiled happily and he watched the skin wrinkle faintly at the bridge of her nose and he smiled with her. "You'll like San Hermano," he said. "And I'd like to show it to you when we get there."

"Did you spend much time there?"

"Only a few days. I took a freighter back from Cairo two years ago and it put in at San Hermano."

"Say, what do you do, anyway?" Jerry asked.

"Don't sound so surprised. I'm a newspaperman."

"Were you a war correspondent?"

Hall nodded. "I even wrote a book."

Jerry looked into her glass. "I know it sounds terrible," she said, "but I haven't read a book in years. Was yours about the war?"

"Let's talk about it in San Hermano. Do I show you the town?"

"It's a date."

"That bell is for us," Hall said. "We'd better get back to the plane."

They left the canteen. Ansaldo and Marina were still walking in a slow circle. "Come on," Jerry said. "Meet my boss."

She approached Ansaldo. "Dr. Ansaldo," she said, "I'd like you to meet Mr. Matthew Hall. He's a newspaperman from the States. And this is Dr. Marina.

"Mr. Hall is showing me around San Hermano when we get there."

"How nice," Ansaldo said, and from his tone Hall knew that he meant nothing of the sort.

"But now we must hurry," Ansaldo said. "The plane is about to depart." He took Jerry's arm and they walked on ahead of Marina and Hall.

"SeÑor Hall, if you are going to write about the doctor's forthcoming operation," Marina said, "I would gladly help you. The doctor is the greatest surgeon of our times, perhaps, who knows, of all times. He is magnificent. In his hands, the scalpel is an instrument of divinity. It is more, it is divinity itself. I must tell you the story of the doctor's greatest operations, although all of them are great. I will help you. You will write a great article about the great operation."

"I am very grateful to you, doctor. I hope that in San Hermano you will have enough time to give me your counsel. After you, doctor." Hall took a last drag at his cigar as Marina climbed the plane ladder.

There was a mountain—the Monte Azul which produced the beans of Androtten's rhapsodies—and a plateau in the clouds and below the plateau lay the ocean and the city of San Hermano. The lights were going on in the city when Flight Eighteen ended on the airport in the plateau, for the city was five miles farther from the sinking sun of the moment. On the plateau, the airport lights blended with the brown-orange shades of dusk; in the city the lights cut through the classic blackness of night.

A smartly dressed colonel and a top-hatted functionary of the Foreign Office were waiting with two black limousines for the Ansaldo party. The man from the Foreign Office had cleared all the passport and customs formalities. Jerry had just enough time to tell Hall that she and the doctors were to stay at the Bolivar before the cars started down the winding hill to San Hermano.

Hall rode to town with the rest of the passengers in the sleek Panair bus. He and Androtten were also bound for the Bolivar.

Riding into the valley, the bus descended into the night. It was a night made blacker by the war, as were the nights in San Juan and Havana and New York. San Hermano was the capital of a nation still at peace, but the maws of the war across the seas reached for the oil and coal of the world, and San Hermano could not escape this world. Three lights in every four on the Plaza de la Republica were out, for coal and oil furnished the power for the city's electricity. Two years earlier, Hall had asked Anibal Tabio why coal and oil had to turn the city's dynamos when the nation abounded in thousands of mountain streams which could be harnessed by men with slide rules and logarithm tables, and the gentle President had answered him in a sentence. "Because, my dear Hall, San Hermano has been in the twentieth century for barely a decade, while your own nation has been in our century for forty years." And tonight, looking at the ancient Plaza from the window of his room on the third floor of the Bolivar, Hall remembered Tabio's words with disturbing clarity.

From the balcony of his hotel room, Hall could see both San Hermanos, the Old City and the New. Everyone spoke of the two cities in these terms—the geographers, the tourist guides, the inveterate Hermanitos themselves.

The Old San Hermano had been founded by the Conquistadores in the sixteenth century, a walled speck on the shores of an ocean, a fortress and a thatched church, a handful of flimsy huts. In a century, the thatched church became a proud, gloomy Cathedral; one of the walls was knocked down, and in its place was the cobbled Plaza de Fernando e Isabel. The Plaza was Spain in the New World; opening on to its cobbles stood the huge Moorish stone palaces designed by architects brought over from Seville, the palace of the Captains-General who served as colonial governors, the fortified mint, the Cathedral, the home of the Governor's elder brother, the Duke of La Runa. Enslaved Indians and later chained Negroes from the African coasts had carried on their backs the square stones Spanish masons cut and formed for the edifices of the Plaza, first the Cathedral, next the Governor's Palace and the Mint.

Then, in the days of Hidalgo, Bolivar, and San Martin, the ancient Plaza of the Conquistadores became the Plaza de la Republica, and for a few glorious hours the new nation was in tune with its century. But the great Liberators of the times were to die in embittered exile, far from the scenes of their brightest victories. For one swing of the pendulum the liberated lands teetered on the dizzy heights of freedom, and then the pendulum swung back and stopped swinging for a century. The land remained in the hands of the Spanish nobles, and they won their war against the Industrial Revolution, and all that remained of the hour of triumph was the name the Liberators had given the old Plaza and a hollow Republic controlled by the landowners.

In ways more subtle, but no less real than the old ways, the Republic became a colony again, except that the nation was no longer ruled by a crown but by new and even more potent symbols: the sign of the pound, the sign of the dollar, the sign of the franc. The new order brought a new San Hermano, a new Western city built around the rims of the old fortress seaport. It was a strange and often beautiful mÉlange of French villas and British banks and American skyscrapers and German town houses.

The old Constitution of the Liberators gave way to a series of native dictators who waxed rich as the servants of the foreign owners of the metals and minerals discovered under the nation's soil, of the foreign business men who never saw San Hermano but built vast abattoirs near the wharves where skinny Hermanitos earned a few pennies a day for slaughtering and then loading endless herds of native cattle in the dark holds of foreign ships.

They were ruthless men, the dictators who sat in San Hermano as pro-Consuls of the foreigners and the landowners, ruthless men who, for their share of the profits of the foreigners, of the endless rivers of pesetas the landowners sent to Spain, maintained armies of cutthroats to put down any attempt at rebellion against the new existing order.

The last of these dictators to sit in San Hermano was General Agusto Segura. More than a decade had passed since Segura had died in bed and a junta of professors and miners wrested the control of the nation from Segura's henchmen. There had been little bloodshed when the Junta took over; after thirty years, the Segura regime, or what was left of it, had just collapsed of its own rottenness.

Hall thought of Segura, and the state he had ruled, and then, again thinking about Tabio while he stared into the shadows of the darkened Plaza de la Republica, Hall remembered Tabio's quiet remark about his country's having been in the twentieth century for barely a decade. A slim decade, which began with a world in confusion and was now ending with a world in flames. But if the country weathered these flames, it would be because Tabio, instead of running for the Presidency after the revolution which swept out the remnants of Segurista power, had chosen to serve as Minister of Education for nearly ten years. Hall was willing to stake his life on this, ready to bet that the phenomenal free educational system Tabio had set up for children and adults would, in the final analysis, be one of the nation's chief bulwarks against fascism.

He changed his clothes and went out for a walk through the crooked streets of Old San Hermano before turning in. Many lights were burning in the fourth floor of the Presidencia, the floor on which the President had his apartment. Military guards were standing listlessly at the entrances to the gilded building.

Hall walked along the Plaza until he came to the Calle de Virtudes, which led to a little cafÉ on the street opposite the rear entrance of the Presidencia. It had no windows but giant shutters which were folded against the wall when the cafÉ was open for business. The cafÉ itself stood on a corner, the sidewalks on both sides of the place covered with tables and chairs. Wooden lattice fences, painted a bright orange, screened the tables from the pedestrian's section of the sidewalk. Inside, near the bar itself, two boys with guitars were playing and singing the tragi-comic peasant songs of the south.

He took a sidewalk table, ordered a meat pie and a bottle of beer, and then went to the small hotel next to the cafÉ to buy a sheet of paper, an envelope, and an air-mail stamp. He asked for a telephone book, looked up the names under Gomez, copied the address of one Juan Gomez, and returned to his table. There he bought a newspaper from a boy peddling the latest edition of the evening. The front page carried a story about Ansaldo: the distinguished visiting medico was to spend the next day conferring with local doctors who had been treating the President. In one of the back pages, under Arrivals, there was a line about the illustrious author and war correspondent Dr. M. Gall who reached San Hermano by Clipper; Dr. Gall was the noted author of The Revenger, even now being produced in Hollywood.

The paper was put aside for the meat pie. When he was done with the food, Hall pushed his plates away and spread his sheet of lined writing paper on the table before him. He called for some ink, filled his fountain pen, and wrote a letter in Spanish to a "Dear Pedro."

It was a rambling, innocuous letter which started out with family gossip about a forthcoming marriage of a cousin, the marriage prospects of the writer's eligible daughter, the letter received from Cousin Hernando who was happy on his new ranch and whose good wife was expecting another child soon. Then the letter went on to say that "I suppose you have read in the Havana papers that our President is ailing. Today there arrived in our city the distinguished Spanish doctor Varela Ansaldo. He is to treat the President. Perhaps I am very stupid, but is he not the surgeon who operated so well on the throat of your dear Uncle Carlos?" The letter then continued on for another page of family gossip and regards and requests that Pedro embrace a whole list of dear cousins and aunts. It was signed, simply, "Juanito."

Hall read the letter twice, sealed it, and addressed the envelope to Pedro de Aragon, Apartado 1724, La Habana, Cuba. Pedro de Aragon was a myth. Mail at this box was picked up by Santiago Iglesias, an officer of the Spanish Republican Army whom Hall had met again in Havana. Iglesias did at one time have an uncle named Carlos; the uncle had died on the Jarama front from a fascist bullet that tore through his throat and killed him instantly. Hall had arranged to write to Iglesias under names chosen from the phone books of different cities if the need arose. He scribbled the name and address of Juan Gomez on the back of the envelope, left some money on the table, and walked back to the Plaza. There he dropped the letter in a mailbox and continued on his way to the Bolivar.

There was a new clerk on duty when Hall reached the hotel, a wiry man of forty-odd whose yellow silk shirt clashed with both his black mohair jacket and his long, lined face. Hall asked for the key to Room 306 in Spanish.

The clerk cleared his throat and answered in English. "There was messages," he said, handing the key to Hall with a sheaf of slips. "And also this." From under the counter he drew a sealed letter written on heavy paper and bearing the neat blue imprint of the American Embassy at San Hermano on the envelope.

Hall frowned and tore open the envelope.

"SeÑorita the Ambassador's daughter telephoned twice," the clerk said.

"Thank you."

"It's on this slip, Mr. Hall."

"Thanks again." He read the few handwritten lines of the letter. It was an invitation from the Ambassador's daughter, Margaret Skidmore, to attend the Ambassador's party at the Embassy on the 5th. That was two nights off.

There was a message from Jerry Olmstead. She had phoned from her room to leave word that she had retired for the evening but would meet him in the dining room at ten for breakfast. Hall noticed that the clerk was watching him intently as he read the girl's message, but when he started to read the next slip the clerk interrupted him.

"It's from Mr. Roger Fielding," he said. "I took the message myself. He is a very nice person. An Englishman."

On the slip the clerk had written, "Mr. Fielding is very sorry you were not in because it is important. He will call you again."

"My name is Fernando Souza," the clerk said, extending his hand. "I am very happy to meet you."

Hall put the papers down on the desk and shook hands with the clerk. They had a meaningless chat about the rigors of wartime travel and the dimout in peaceful San Hermano and Hall learned that the Englishman Fielding was in the tall Lonja de Comercio building and very decent. "I have been at this desk for many years and in this position one meets many people," the clerk said, and he went on amiably chatting about what one could see on different one-day tours from the city.

"It is very sad about the President," Hall said, and then the clerk reddened and he forgot to speak English. "The Educator must live," Fernando Souza said. "If the Educator goes, the nation goes."

"I know," Hall said. "I admire Don Anibal greatly."

"Momentico, SeÑor. El telÉfono." After nine, the night clerk had to handle the switchboard at the Bolivar.

It was Fielding again. Hall picked up the phone on the marble counter. "Yes, Mr. Fielding," he said, "I'm sorry I missed your first call."

"Not at all, old man. Not at all. Damned decent of you to answer my call now, what with the hour and all that." The voice which came through Hall's receiver was the raspy, crotchety, bluff voice of a movie Britisher, the diction almost too good to be true. "I must say it was a good surprise, a good surprise. The paper tonight, I mean, even if they called you Dr. Gall. But what can they do if the H is silent in Spanish?"

"I've been called Gall before."

"Of course you have, of course you have." The man at the other end of the wire cleared his throat with a loud harumph. "What I'm calling about, Mr. Hall, is—well, damn it all, what with the war and all that I guess we have a right to keep a tired traveler from going to bed the second his plane reaches the end of his road. I think it rather urgent we have a bit of coffee and a bit of a chat tonight. Really, old man, I think it is urgent."

"At what time?" Hall asked.

"I'm at home now," Fielding said. "I can get to Old San Hermano in an hour. Souza can tell you how to get to my office. Nice chap, that Souza. Straight as a die."

"Good."

"The office is about ten minutes from the Bolivar by cab, if Souza can get you a cab. Suppose I ring you at the Bolivar when I reach the office?"

"That will be fine. See you soon." Hall put the phone down and turned to Souza. "He said you are straight as a die," he said.

"Mr. Fielding is a very decent Englishman," Souza said. He offered no further information about Roger Fielding, and Hall decided against asking any questions.

"If you are meeting him at his office, I had better get you a cab," Souza said, and then, sensing the hesitation in Hall's eyes, he quickly added, "it would be better. Walking at night is dangerous, especially in Old San Hermano, since the lights went out. There are many—accidents."

"O.K.," Hall said. "Look, I'm going upstairs to catch a little sleep. When Fielding calls back, get me that cab and send up a pot of coffee. And it's been good meeting you, even if Fielding does say you are straight as a die."

Souza did not get the joke, but he knew that Hall was trying to joke and he laughed.

Hall went to his room, took off his shoes and his suit, and fell across the bed. He dozed off wondering why he had agreed so readily to meet the man with the tailor-made British diction.

At ten-fifteen his phone rang. "Mr. Fielding called ten minutes ago. I have your cab ready now. He is a very reliable driver."

"Good. How about my coffee?"

Souza laughed. "The only waiter on duty is a cabrÓn, SeÑor. Mr. Fielding will have much better coffee for you, anyway."

Hall chuckled as he washed the sleep out of his eyes with cold water and combed his hair. The waiter is a cabrÓn! There was one for the book. Hall made up a song while he dressed, a song about yes we have no coffee today because the son of a gun is a dirty cabrÓn so we have no coffee today.

Souza slammed his palm down on the bell twice when the elevator let Hall into the lobby. "Pepito!" he shouted.

The biggest cab driver Hall had ever seen outside of the United States bounded into the lobby from the blackness of the San Hermano night. He advanced toward the desk in seven-league strides, wiping his right hand on the blouse of his pale-blue slack suit and taking off his white chauffeur's cap with the other hand. He hovered over Hall like a mother hen.

"Pepito," Souza said, "this is SeÑor Hall." This he said in Spanish. In English, he again told Hall that the man was a very reliable driver.

"Con mucho gusto, SeÑor 'All. Me llamo Delgado." Sheepishly, the giant offered his hand to Hall.

"I am much pleased," Hall said. "Shall we start now?"

Pepito Delgado led Hall to a blue 1935 LaSalle parked in front of the Bolivar. "She is my own machine after I make the last payment next month," Delgado said. "I am glad you speak Spanish. It is the only language I know." He drove Hall to the ten-story Comercio building in a few minutes.

When Hall tried to pay him, Delgado shook his head happily. "You'll pay me later," he smiled. "I'll wait for you."

"But I may be hours," Hall protested.

Delgado called upon the Saints in a series of genially blasphemous exhortations. "Mother of God," he said, "it is bad luck not to make a round trip with the first American of the season. I'll wait and not charge you more than two pesos for the whole trip."

"I do not wish to rob you," Hall said. "Wait, and we shall make a fair price later."

He entered the Comercio building, but as the doors of the elevator closed and he started on his way up to the seventh floor Hall knew that Delgado was only playing the fool and was in fact no man's fool at all, and it bothered him. The right side of his face twitched slightly as he left the car and walked down to the bend in the hall leading to Room 719.