Rebound (25 page)

He walked toward the manager, who had backed up against the barn wall, made of roughly cast concrete with board marks showing.
The workers had moved away to the sides, leaving him standing there alone to face the guerrillas.

The manager knew this was the end. His eyes stared with fear, his upper lip twitched, and sweat rolled down his forehead.
He was in his late fifties, gray, still powerful, but no match for the easy brute strength of Cristobal.

The guerrilla commander walked slowly up to him, stooped a few feet from him, and picked up a rough stone that filled his
right palm. He stepped closer. The manager stared him in the eyes, as if this could intimidate Cristobal.

With the speed of a striking snake Cristobal rapped his forehead with the stone. It was not a powerful blow, but it opened
a bloody wound above the man’s eye and cracked the back of his skull against the concrete wall.

Cristobal took in a deep breath at the pleasure of the blow. Then he hit him again and again.

Aroused by the disturbance at first light, Ruben Montova put his dressing gown over his pajamas and padded in his slippers
down to Happy Man’s suite of rooms. Ruben had a slight hangover, more to do with lack of sleep and too many cigarettes, he
decided, than liquor.

There were five armed guards in Happy Man’s suite. Two of the girls lay naked on his bed, blissfully passed out. Happy Man
sat up between them, also naked and still drunk or stoned or something.

“There is a black cloud floating over my head,” he told Ruben when he saw him come in.

Ruben looked and saw nothing.

Happy Man laughed his crazy, high-pitched, drunk cackle. “You are a very literal-minded man, Ruben, and I value you for that.
Sometimes,
however, I wish you were a little more imaginative.” He pointed above his head. “The cloud I was talking about is the curse
that I feel hanging over me all the time.”

“Old Apo the herbalist cures emanations,” one of the gunmen said in a reverent tone.

Happy Man looked at him. “Is that old man still alive? I remember him when I was a child, and he was old then.”

“He has the
anting-anting,”
the gunman said. These were spiritual powers associated in some ways with the old gods before Christianity.

“Yes, he does,” Happy Man said. “My father used to visit him in the old days. He always said Apo was a great healer. I must
visit him today.”

“I’m going back to bed,” Ruben muttered.

“Wait! Haven’t you heard? Ruben, you must come with me. Froilan Quijano, the communist organizer from Bacolod, is downstairs.
You’ve heard of him, surely.”

“He’s a friend of yours?” Montova was enraged.

“No. I’ve never seen him in my life, except that time on television before he went into hiding. I come here for peace. What
happens? Three of my managers are murdered within minutes of each other in three different places by the NPA. Then I am disturbed
at dawn next day to hear that the best-known communist on the island of Negros is in my house and insists of talking to me.”

“Why didn’t your guards shoot him?” Ruben demanded.

“They didn’t know who he was. He came
here in a car, which is parked outside. They thought he was some business associate, here because of an emergency. So they
searched him and the car and told him to wait.”

“Don’t see him,” Ruben said. “Call the militia and have him picked up.”

“I have a feeling that any militia trucks headed this way right now will be ambushed,” Happy Man said. “I don’t need my militia.
My house guards can hold him, if that’s what I want. I’m sure the NPA have taken that into account before sending him here.”

“They’re animals!” Montova spat. “Stupid malingering beasts who need whipping, not talking to.”

“Maybe you are right, Ruben,” Happy Man said. “So why don’t you come down with me to see him to make sure I don’t make a fool
of myself.”

Thus flattered about his importance by Velez, Montova went with him to see the communist. Before Happy Man would talk with
him, he insisted on opening a bottle of iced champagne.

“Communists love good champagne,” Happy Man observed to Ruben as Quijano sipped from his glass.

“It’s the people who can afford to drink it every day that we don’t like,” Quijano said with a smile.

Happy Man laughed.

“But I am not here to pay a social call,” Quijano said. He pulled out a map and spread it on the table. “These are your properties.
This line down the middle of your plantations represents a temporary truce line. To the west of that
line no NPA guerrillas will operate. In return you will not send your militias or private guards east of that line. Your plantation
workers may go where they please, as long as they are unarmed. In return for observing this truce line, no more attacks will
be made on your military or farm personnel. Also, there will be no more agitation for reforms in the immediate future. In
addition to this the NPA offers to protect you from personal attack anywhere in its power.”

“Who gets the sugarcane east of this line?” Happy Man asked suspiciously.

“You do. It’s your property. As I said, we will press for no reforms on your plantations.”

“Who do I have to support or endorse?” Happy Man asked.

“No one. The NPA does not even ask you to remain neutral.”

“Sounds too good to be true,” Happy Man said. “What’s so important about the eastern half of my properties?”

“Nothing. The NPA wishes to establish total military control of that part of the island. No one will interfere with your visits
or with your workers. Just do not bring armed men in.”

“What if the regular Army or Marines decide to pay a visit? I can’t keep them out even if I wanted to.”

Quijano smiled tightly. “With your relations with the generals, Mr. Velez, I don’t think any military units will be sent to
help you unless you ask for them. If the NPA decides that you have betrayed their agreement with you, it would be up to the
regional commander to take action against you.”

“Cristobal? The caveman with the stone.”

“I know nothing about these matters,” Quijano said, and permitted Happy Man to refill his glass.

“What do you think, Ruben?” Velez asked.

“I think you should shoot this criminal and send his body by truck to Bacolod.”

“Yes, that’s a good strong response,” Happy Man said, and gargled champagne. “Any comment on the truce line?”

“The NPA is offering you peace in exchange for half your land,” Ruben said. “It may not seem this way at first, but sooner
or later you will find your sugar revenues from that land going to them instead of you. I also believe they are up to something
else. I don’t know what, but I sense it.”

“Ruben is very good at rooting up hidden things,” Happy Man said to Quijano. “He really surprises people often by what he
discovers about them. Is there anything else you want to add to your explanation of this truce line?”

“I am a plainspoken man, Mr. Velez. You have heard the NPA offer. It is a very reasonable one. If something unexpected crops
up that makes you unhappy, I will come here and discuss it with you.”

“Not so early next time,” Happy Man said.

Montova said harshly. “What if Mr. Velez does not agree to go along with the NPA on this?”

Quijano smiled wanly at him. “You’re speaking as if Mr. Velez really has a choice.”

Montova turned to Happy Man. “I’m going
back to bed. Do you want me to call the guard in to arrest this criminal?”

Happy Man laughed. “Tell him to bring another bottle of champagne instead.” He turned to Quijano. “You want to meet a couple
of nice girls?”

Dartley waited for an Ermita sporting-goods store to open and bought four golf bags, refusing all bargain deals on clubs and
balls. He was lugging these along the sidewalk, two on each shoulder, when he heard a familiar voice behind him.

“Caddy, sir?”

Harry took two of the bags and walked alongside him.

“Finding it hard to go back to the souvenir business?” Dartley inquired.

“Something like that.”

“You weren’t made for the line of work I do, Harry. That’s not a criticism. Indeed, if you think about it, it’s a compliment.
I don’t want to see you killed. Not that I give a shit about you as a person. I just don’t need the nagging responsibility
of having you along. Nothing personal. I work alone.”

“If I can find you in a huge city like Manila, you are not doing very well on your own.”

Dartley couldn’t argue about that. “Does your wife know that Benjael is dead?”

“My wife does not know I talk with people like Benjael. You heard about the attacks on Happy Man’s managers in Negros Occidental?”

“Yes, I’ve been wondering whether I should go now or wait to see if he runs again.”

“He’ll stay,” Harry said. “It will take a lot to move him from the family plantations.” He held up one golf bag. “But you
were leaving for there, anyway.”

“I was thinking about it.”

“I have been thinking also,” Harry announced. “I am not good at fighting and shooting, as you know. But you do not need me
for that. If you do not have a Filipino representing you in Negros Occidental, you will waste much of your time trying to
find your way and getting simple things done. People will try things with a foreigner they would never try with a fellow Filipino,
even if he is not from their island. People are backward on Negros. There are no Hiltons, American Express—”

“I don’t need them,” Dartley said interrupting. “You’ve made your point, Harry. But there’s going to be a lot of risk in it
for you.”

“Risk? I grew up in Tondo. Risk is my brother and sister.”

Dartley drove his hired car into the oldest part of the city, close to the South Harbor, where slum tenements mixed with decrepit
warehouses. He had been by here before to check things out, and it amused Dartley to notice Harry’s surprise at the knowledgeable
way in which this American was driving through the warren of streets. He backed the car into a loading bay beneath a rusted
metal roof, and they went inside the building with the four golf bags. A wizened old man in a battered wicker chair smoked
a huge, home-rolled cigar and ignored them. They took the rickety freight elevator without sides or a roof to the third
floor, to which there was no access except through a locked steel door. Dartley hammered on it, and after some time it was
opened by a no-necked brawny type with a Crucifixion tattooed on his right forearm, a blue figure on a green cross with red
blood. He didn’t ask who they were, just waved them in and locked the door behind them.

Wood crates with stenciled letters were placed one on top of the other, creating islands on the bare floor of the large loft,
beneath rows of fluorescent lights. Dartley’s goods were stacked in a separate pile. The weapons were wrapped in white cloth,
stained with lubricating oil. He and Harry balanced the weight out evenly among the four golf bags and topped off each load
with ammo boxes. This was neither the time nor the place to check if the weapons were all there. In fact, Dartley did not
intend to check at all before leaving, because even if he had been cheated, he was not going to make matters any better through
arguments with Fu. Either Fu was a straight dealer or he wasn’t. Arms dealers were in a position to make the rules.

Again without asking Harry for any directions, Dartley drove out to the airfield on the northern edge of the huge Manila urban
complex to which the Australian had flown them previously. Dartley had phoned his business number the day before, and they
saw him standing by his blue-and-white Cessna, waiting for them.

The pilot’s name was Purcell. He greeted them like old friends and made a joke about the favorite Strine sport being a “horse
rice.” Harry’s
English was good, but this was too much for him.

“No,” Purcell told him, “we Aussies don’t grow rice for horses. It’s just the way we pronounce
horse race.
” He adjusted the brim of his bushman’s hat. “I see I’m carrying cargo today. Where are we going?”

Dartley told him. Although the Cessna P210R was a single-engine plane, it seated six and had a payload of more than 1600 pounds.
The plane had a range of nearly 1500 miles, a 325-horse-power turbocharged engine and a cruising speed of 245 miles per hour.
The cabin was pressurized for high-altitude flight, and the landing gear was retractable. Back in the States, this plane was
a frequent target of thieves for use in drug running, because it was very maneuverable and fast, flew well at low altitudes,
and carried a substantial load.

Taking Harry out of earshot, Dartley said to him, “This is your last chance to back out. You know you’ll be putting your life
in jeopardy. I don’t want any heroes sacrificing themselves, Harry. There’s nothing in this mission worth doing that for.
I’m here to avenge some dead Americans who might be forgotten otherwise. You don’t have any good reason to come, and you have
some real good reasons to stay behind, meaning a wife and children.”

“They are my reason for going. This is our ticket out of Tondo. Even if something happens to me, I know you will pay my money
to them.”