Death Instinct - Jed Rubenfeld [141]
“What’s the matter?” asked Fall when Littlemore was let in to see him.
“I read the Mexico story in the paper, Mr. Senator.”
“Now that’s something I’m proud of,” said the Senator, stretching his arms and leaning back in his chair. “The two presidents-elect of the two largest democracies in the world. It’ll be a first. Harding doesn’t want to go, but I’ll persuade him. Obregón will pull his troops out of the mines and let us keep our oil wells, and all will be right with the world.”
“I don’t think Mr. Harding should go, sir.”
“You’re giving me advice on foreign policy?”
“What if it was Mexico, Mr. Fall?”
“What if what was Mexico?”
“What if it was Mexico, not Russia?”
There was a long pause. “You ain’t talking about the bombing, are you, son?” asked Fall.
“Remember what you asked me the first time I met you? What country stood to gain from the bombing, what country had the motive, what country would have felt it had the right to attack us?”
“Sure I remember.”
“Nobody had a bigger motive to bomb J. P. Morgan than the Mexicans,” said Littlemore. “Morgan’s been bleeding them dry—keeping every banker in the world from lending to Mexico for six years. That’s not the only motive either. From what I hear, they hate us pretty good down there, sir. Been looking to pay us back for a long time.”
“What for?”
“The Mexican-American War.”
“What kind of—? That’s ancient history, boy. Nobody even remembers that war.”
“They remember it, sir. We took almost half their land. Invaded them. Occupied Mexico City. Killed a lot of people. There were some atrocities. I think they think we look down on them, Senator Fall. On top of which they think we’re taking all their silver and oil, getting rich while they’re dirt poor.”
Fall considered. “I was going to say that’s the most ridiculous thing I ever heard, but maybe it ain’t. This new envoy Torres—I’ll tell you the truth, he didn’t rub me the right way. Like he was hiding something.”
“Let’s say they were getting ready to nationalize our oil wells,” Littlemore went on. “They’d have to show us that even though our army can lick theirs, they can hurt us in a different way—a new way—that an army can’t stop. Hurt us badly enough so it wouldn’t be worthwhile to invade.”
“You’re saying the bombing was supposed to show us how they’d fight if we invaded?”
“I’m saying that if you look at it from Mexico’s point of view, it starts to make sense. An attack on Morgan. Revenge for our invasion. And a warning of what kind of damage they can inflict on us if we move in with our army after they take back the oil. All three at once.”
“In that case they’d have to be first-class idiots,” said Fall, “because they forgot to tell us they were the ones who did it.”
“They wouldn’t want to say it right out,” answered Littlemore. “Then we’d have to send the army in, which is what they don’t want. So they’d leave us a sign showing they did it, without giving us any proof.”
“But they didn’t leave a sign.”
“They did,” said Littlemore. “Do you know when Mexican Independence Day is?”
“No.”
“September sixteenth.”
Fall was silent for several seconds. “You sure about that? Not the fifteenth, not the seventeenth?”
“September sixteenth, Mr. Senator. And it’s a big day for them, just like it is for us.”
“Well, I don’t use the word irony much, but ain’t that an irony? They were trying to show us they ain’t so puny, but they’re so puny we didn’t even get the message.”
“Something else, Mr. Fall. Two weeks before the bombing, Mr. Lamont of the Morgan Bank was threatened. Lamont got it mixed up though. He thought a banker named Speyer was the one making the threat, but it wasn’t Speyer. It was a Mexican consul—a guy named Pesqueira—who said that if Morgan didn’t start letting money back into Mexico,