The Feast of the Goat - Mario Vargas Llosa [52]
“Well, if he doesn’t come we’ll go to the Pony and have a cold beer,” he heard him say morosely.
After their fight, he and Salvador did not see each other for months. They would both be at the same social gathering and not say hello. Their break heightened the torment in which he lived. When the conspiracy was fairly well developed, Antonio had the courage to show up at 21 Mahatma Gandhi and go directly to the living room where Salvador was sitting.
“It’s useless for us to scatter our efforts,” he said by way of greeting. “Your plans to kill the Goat are childish. You and Imbert should join us. Our plan is worked out and can’t fail.”
Salvador looked into his eyes and said nothing. He made no hostile gesture and did not throw him out of his house.
“I have the support of the gringos,” Antonio explained, lowering his voice. “I’ve spent two months discussing the details at the embassy. Juan Tomás Díaz has also been talking to Consul Dearborn’s people. They’ll give us weapons and explosives. We have high-ranking officers involved. You and Tony should join us.”
“There are three of us,” Turk said finally. “Amadito García Guerrero became part of it a few days ago.”
Their reconciliation was only relative. They had not had another serious argument during the months when the plan to kill Trujillo was made, unmade, remade, with a different form and a different date every month, every week, every day, because of the vacillations of the Yankees. The planeload of weapons originally promised by the embassy was reduced, in the end, to three rifles that were given to him not long ago by his friend Lorenzo D. Berry, the owner of Wimpy’s Supermarket, who, to his astonishment, turned out to be the CIA’s man in Ciudad Trujillo. In spite of these cordial meetings, when the only topic was the plan in perpetual transformation, the old, fraternal communication was not reestablished between them—the jokes and confidences, the interweaving of shared intimacies that existed, Antonio knew, among Turk, Imbert, and Amadito, and from which he had been excluded ever since the argument. Another piece of misery to hold the Goat responsible for: he had lost his friend forever.
His three companions in the car, and the other three waiting up ahead, may have been the people who knew least about the conspiracy. It was possible they suspected certain other accomplices, but if something went wrong and they fell into Johnny Abbes García’s hands, and the caliés took them to La Cuarenta and subjected them to their usual tortures, then Turk, Imbert, Amadito, Huáscar, Pastoriza, and Pedro Livio would not be able to implicate too many people. General Juan Tomás Díaz, Luis Amiama Tió, two or three others. They knew almost nothing about the rest, who included the most important figures in the government, Pupo Román, for example—head of the Armed Forces, the regime’s number-two man—and myriad ministers, senators, civilian officials, and high-ranking military officers who were informed about their plans, had participated in their preparation or knew about them indirectly, and had let it be known or understood or guessed through intermediaries (as in the case of Balaguer himself, the theoretical President of the Republic) that once the Goat was eliminated, they would be prepared to cooperate in the political rebuilding, the eradication of the last dregs of Trujillism, the opening, the civilian-military junta that, with the support of the United States, would guarantee order, block the Communists, call for elections. Would the Dominican Republic finally be a normal country, with an elected government, a free press, a system of justice worthy of the name? Antonio sighed. He had worked so hard for that and still he couldn’t bring himself to believe it. In fact, he was the only one who knew like the back of his hand