Wrath of God

Jack Higgins

The Wrath of God

Dedication

For David Godfrey with thanks

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Publisher’s Note

Foreword

Mexico

1922

1

The Chief of Police usually managed to execute somebody round…

2

When we got back to the hotel, Janos took me…

3

It was all over very quickly. The men who had…

4

The next few minutes could well have been my last…

5

My father, a dedicated Fenian till the day he died…

6

‘In the year since the Revolution there has been much…

7

We left at six o’clock on as grey and dreary…

8

Smoke drifted into the late afternoon air in a dense…

9

For years I had lived a life in which everything…

10

He gave us no chance to discuss things with him,…

11

He had brought her to witness van Horne’s humiliation and…

12

I awakened to darkness, the pulsating beat of music. Guitars…

13

I surfaced to the patter of rain against the canvas,…

14

Inside the church away from the others, Nachita filled in…

15

All I could do now was wait for Nachita for…

About the Author

Other Books by Jack Higgins

Copyright

About the Publisher

PUBLISHER’S NOTE

THE WRATH OF GOD was first published in the UK by Macmillan and Co. in 1971 and later by Penguin Books. This amazing novel has been out of print for some years, and in 2011, it seemed to the author and his publishers that it was a pity to leave such a good story languishing on his shelves. So we are delighted to be able to bring back THE WRATH OF GOD for the pleasure of the vast majority of us who never had a chance to read the earlier editions.

FOREWORD

The first book I wrote after giving up a university career and becoming a full time writer. It was published in Britain and the USA with some success, but the interesting thing was that it received many film offers.

Finally, it was produced by MGM as a major movie with the great Robert Mitchum playing the strange priest who travels to Mexico during the early twenties in a huge open car but with a machine gun in his Gladstone bag. Is he really a priest is the question. The villain was played by a great Broadway star, Frank Langella and the wonderful Rita Hayworth played his mother, her last film before illness finished off her career for good. Over the years, Wrath of God has become a cult classic.

1

The Chief of Police usually managed to execute somebody round about noon on most days of the week, just to encourage the rest of the population, which gives a fair idea of how things were in that part of Mexico at the time.

The sound of the first ragged volley sent my hand down inside my coat in a kind of reflex action when I was half-way up the hill from the railway station. For most of the way I had managed to stay in the shade, but when I emerged into the Plaza Civica, the sun caught me by the throat and squeezed hard, bringing sweat from every pore.

The executions were taking place in the courtyard of the police barracks and the gates stood wide open to give an uninterrupted view to anyone interested enough to watch, which on that occasion meant a couple of dozen Indians and mestizos. Not a bad audience considering the noonday heat and the frequency with which the performance was repeated.

At the rear of the small crowd an automobile was parked, a Mercedes roadster with the hood down, the entire vehicle coated with a layer of fine white dust from the dirt roads. An exotic item to find in a town like Bonito at that time. More surprising was the driver, who was getting out just as I arrived, for he was a priest, although like no other priest I’d seen outside of Ireland – a great ox of a man in a shovel hat and faded cassock.

He ignored the rest of the audience, most of whom were surprised to see him there, produced a cigarillo from a fat leather case and searched for a match. I found one before he did, struck it and held it out for him.

He turned and looked at me sharply, giving me a sight of his face for the first time. A tangled greying beard, vivid blue eyes and the unmistakable furrow of an old bullet wound along the side of his skull just above the left eye. One of the lucky ones to survive the revolution.

He took the light without a word and we stood side by side and watched as they marched three Indians across the courtyard from the jail and stood them against the wall. There were already half a dozen bodies on the ground and the wall was pitted with scars. The three men stood there impassively as a sergeant tied their hands behind their backs.

The priest said, ‘Does this happen often?’

He had spoken in Spanish, but with an accent that indicated that he was anything but Mexican.

I replied in English, ‘The Chief of Police says it’s the only way he can keep down the numbers in the jail.’

He glanced at me with a slight frown. ‘Irish?’

‘As ever was, father.’

‘A long way from home.’

New England American, or somewhere near unless I missed my guess.

‘I thought the revolution was supposed to be over?’ he said, and looked back towards the scene in the courtyard. ‘What a bloody country.’

Which was a reasonably unpriestlike remark although understandable in the circumstances. I said, ‘The discontented are always with us, father, even after revolutions. Why, there are some in these parts who think it’s still open season on priests.’

‘We’re in God’s hands,’ he said harshly. ‘All of us.’

Which was arguable, but I was prevented from taking the question up with him for one of the condemned against the wall inside the courtyard cried out sharply and pointed towards us as the sergeant was about to tie his hands.

There was some kind of disturbance and then a young officer strolled towards the gate and beckoned to the priest who left me without a word and went towards him.

‘Believe it or not, father, but one of these pigs wants to confess,’ I heard the officer say.

The priest said nothing; simply took a breviary from his pocket, spat out his cigarillo and started through the gate. By the time he reached the wall, all three were on their knees waiting for him.

I didn’t stop to watch for I had seen men die before or at least that’s what I told myself as I turned and went across the square to the Hotel Blanco on the far side. It was a tall slender building which had been used as a strong-point by the government forces during the war and the crumbling facade was pitted with bullet holes.

In the patio a fountain splashed water across scarlet tiles and the cool darkness of the terrace looked very inviting. The owner of the place lounged in a wicker chair by the screen door, fanning himself with a palm fan. His name was Janos and he was Hungarian as far as I could make out, although his English was excellent. The most noticeable thing about him was his great size. He must have been seventeen or eighteen stone at least, with a great pendulous belly and sweated constantly.

‘Ah, Mr Keogh. A hot day. You will join me in a beer?’

There were several stone bottles of lager in a bucket of water at his side. I helped myself to one and pulled the cork. As I did so, another volley sounded in the courtyard opposite. I sat on the rail beside him as the crowd began to disperse.

‘A nasty business,’ Janos said, managing to sound as if he didn’t give a damn.

‘Yes, too bad,’ I answered automatically, for I was watching for the priest.

He emerged from the gateway with the officer who walked to the Mercedes with him. They stood talking for a while, then the officer saluted and the priest got into the car and drove away.

‘A strange sight that,’ Janos commented. ‘Not only a priest, but a priest in an automobile.’

‘I suppose so.’ I emptied the beer bottle and stood up.

‘But not to you, Mr Keogh. Here, have another beer.’ He lifted one, dripping wet from the bucket and held it out to me. ‘In your Ireland you will have been familiar with many such vehicles. Here, they are still a rarity. You can drive yourself, I understand?’

Which was leading to something. I said, ‘It’s not very difficult.’

‘For an intelligent man perhaps not, but these peasants.’ He shrugged. ‘They are incapable of learning anything beyond the simplest tasks. I myself have a truck. The only one in Bonito. Most important to my business. I imported a driver-mechanic specially from Tampico, but the wretched man had to go and involve himself in politics.’

‘A dangerous thing to do in this country.’

He wiped a fresh layer of sweat from his fat face. ‘He was in the first batch they shot this morning. Most unfortunate.’

He obviously meant for himself personally. I said, ‘That’s life, Mr Janos. He shouldn’t have joined.’

A pretty hard way of looking at it, but then most of the more human feeling had been burned out of me a long time ago, particularly where that kind of situation was concerned. It was none of my affair and I was tired of the conversation which for some reason had a strange air of unreality to it. I was hot and I was tired and wanted nothing so much as a bath and perhaps a couple of hours on my bed before the train left.

I stood up and Janos said, ‘I have a rather important consignment to go to Huila. You know the place, perhaps?’

I saw then what he wanted, but there was no reason why I should make it easy for him. ‘No, I can’t say I do.’

‘Two hundred miles north of here towards the American border. Dirt roads, but not too bad in the dry season.’

But by then, I’d had enough. I said, ‘I’m catching the two-thirty train for Tampico.’

‘You could be back by tomorrow night. Catch the train the following day.’

‘But miss the boat to Havana tomorrow evening,’ I said. ‘And there’s no refund on the ticket.’

‘How much was it? Forty-two American dollars?’ He shrugged. ‘I will pay you five hundred, Mr Keogh. Five hundred good American dollars and very easily earned, you must admit.’

Which brought me up rather sharply because after paying for my tickets I’d no more than twenty or thirty dollars left.

‘That’s a great deal of money for running a few supplies up-country,’ I said carefully.

So he decided to be honest with me, the great shining face creasing into a jovial man-to-man smile. ‘I will be frank with you, Mr Keogh. The crates in my truck contain good Scotch whisky. A commodity in short supply in Mexico, God alone knows, but over the border they have what is known as Prohibition. There it will be worth considerably more.’

‘Including a five-year prison sentence if you’re caught running the stuff,’ I pointed out.

‘A risk someone else assumes,’ he said. ‘The man who takes over the consignment in Huila. You, my friend, will be breaking no law known to me. Not while you are in Mexico. To trade in alcohol here is perfectly legitimate.’

Which was true enough and the prospect was tempting for even if I forfeited that boat ticket I’d still be considerably better off.

He thought he had me and gave it another push. ‘I’ll tell you what I’ll do, Mr Keogh. Five hundred and another boat ticket. Now can I say fairer, sir? Answer me that.’

He was being jovial again which didn’t become him, but his eyes, those sad, grey Hungarian eyes were still and watchful and I think it was that which really decided me, combined with the fact that I wasn’t at all sure that I liked him.

‘No thanks,’ I said. ‘The price is too high.’

The smile was wiped clean, the eyes became totally blank. ‘I don’t understand you. I know your financial situation. What you say doesn’t make sense.’

‘It wouldn’t,’ I said. ‘I wasn’t talking about money, Mr Janos. I was talking about Mexico. I’ve had all I can take. Six months of heat, flies and squalor. And I haven’t known a day when they haven’t been shooting somebody. You’ll have to find someone else.’

‘I don’t think you understand,’ he said carefully. ‘There is no one else.’

‘Which is your problem, not mine.’

The palm fan had stopped moving and he sat there staring at me and yet not at me, sweat pouring down his face, those grey eyes fixed on a point somewhere beyond me. The fan started to move again, rapidly, and he wiped the sweat away with his enormous silk handkerchief.

And suddenly that jovial smile was back in place. ‘Why then I can only wish you luck, sir, and shake you by the hand.’

He held it out and I took it for it would have seemed churlish not to, but it was the wrong kind of grip for a fat man who did nothing but sit and sweat. Firm and strong – very strong, which made me feel distinctly uneasy as I walked away for he had given in too easily.

Before the Revolution the Hotel Blanco must have been rather spectacular, but now there were cracks on the marble stairs, great slabs of plaster flaking away from the walls. It was as if the place were disintegrating slowly. There was no lock on my door which always stood open a little and inside the room was like an oven for the electric fan in the ceiling hadn’t turned for five years which was when they’d dynamited the power plant.

I managed to get the shutters open, breaking a couple of slats in the process and let in a little warm air. I was soaked in sweat and the revolver in the leather shoulder holster under my right arm had rubbed painfully. I took off my jacket, unstrapped the holster, with some relief, and put it down on the bed.

Once this room had been something quite special for it still had its own bathroom through the far door, but now it had that derelict air common to cheap rooms the world over. It was as if no one had ever really lived here. For no accountable reason I ached for some soft Kerry rain on my face again. Wanted to stand with my eyes turned up to it, to let it run into my mouth, but that was not to be. That was foolishness of the worst kind.

The bathroom had the same air of tarnished magnificence as the rest of the hotel. The floor and the walls were covered with imported Italian tiles, all sporting little naked cherubs offering bunches of grapes to each other. The bath itself was cracked in a hundred places, but big enough to swim in and although most of the brass fittings had been stolen at one time or another, tepid brown water still gushed from a gilded lion’s mouth when you turned the handle.

I returned to the bedroom, took off the rest of my clothes and pulled on my old robe. Then I went back into the bathroom, taking the shoulder holster with me for old habits die hard.

The water was by now so brown that I was unable to see the bottom of the bath, but I lowered myself in without a qualm and lay back and stared at the cracked ceiling.

How easily things become what we want them to. The cracks on that ceiling became a map, line by line flowering into shape before me. The railway snaking down through Monterey to Tampico. Then the route across the Gulf north of the Yucatan Peninsula to Cuba and Havana town.

And what would I do there? I had an address, no more than that. A man who might be able to give me work or might not. And afterwards? But there was no answer to that one and each day would have to bring what it chose.

There was a sudden muffled crash from the bedroom that had me out of the bath and reaching for my revolver all in the same movement. I flattened myself against the wall beside the door, out of line of fire if anyone intended to shoot their way in.

I got my robe on one-handed and not without difficulty and listened. There was no sound, so I did what seemed the obvious thing, flung open the door and dropped to one knee.

The man who stood by the bed searching my jacket was straight out of the market-place, a mestizo in ragged trousers and shirt and palm-leaf sombrero. He had just taken the wallet from the inner pocket. Everything I had in the world.

‘Not today, compadre,’ I said. ‘Put it on the bed and quickly.’

At first it looked as if he was going to do as he was told. His shoulders sagged. He said brokenly, ‘Señor, my wife, my children. For pity’s sake.’

Which didn’t particularly impress me for any painter specializing in theological subjects would have found him a fair likeness for Judas Iscariot. It worked to a certain degree for when he turned to fling the jacket in my face and ran, he definitely caught me off balance.

When I reached the door, he was almost at the head of the stairs which didn’t give me a great deal of choice as he was still clutching my wallet in his right hand, so I brought him down with a snap shot in the right leg.

He went over the edge of the stairs without a cry and I heard him crash against the ironwork banisters twice. When I reached the head of the stairs he was lying face-down on the next landing. He glanced back over his shoulder, his face twisted with rage and to my complete astonishment, started to slither down the rest of the broad marble stairs leaving a snail’s trail of blood behind him.

Several things happened at about the same time then. Janos came stumping out of the shadows leaning on his black ivory walking stick, a couple of retainers from the kitchen at his back. ‘By God, sir, what’s going on here?’

‘My wallet,’ I said. ‘He stole my wallet.’

The thief slid the rest of the way down to the hall and collapsed at the fat man’s feet. Janos leaned over him and poked around in the shadows. When he straightened his face was grave and baleful.

‘Wallet, sir? I see no wallet here.’

Which was when my heart really started to sink as it suddenly occurred to me that there was just a faint possibility that there was more to this than met the eye.

The police arrived on the run, armed to the teeth as usual, ready to spray everything in sight as they came through the door, although the sergeant in charge was exquisitely polite and listened to my story with the utmost patience.

The wretch on the floor, whom no one seemed to be particularly concerned about, clutched his leg, blood oozing between his fingers and cursed all gringos and their seed to the tenth generation. He was wholly innocent and employed by Señor Janos as a general porter. The sergeant booted him casually in the ribs, left his men to search for the wallet and took me up to my room to get dressed.

‘Do not worry, señor,’ he comforted me. ‘The man is a known thief. Señor Janos gave him honest work out of the largeness of his heart and this is how he serves him. We will find this wallet. Fear not, your name will be cleared.’

But when we returned to the foot of the stairs, and he discovered his men’s lack of success, a fact to which I had already become resigned, his face assumed a more melancholy expression.

‘This is a grave matter, señor, you realize my position? To shoot this man for stealing your wallet is one thing …’

‘But to shoot him, full stop, is quite another.’

‘Exactly, señor, I am afraid you must accompany me to headquarters. The jefe will wish to question you.’

His hand on my arm was no longer gentle and as we moved forward, Janos said passionately, his jowls shaking, ‘By God, sir, I’ll stand by you. Trust in me, Mr Keogh.’

Hardly the most comforting of thoughts on which to be led away.

Above the town the Sierras floated in a blue haze, marching north towards the border. It was all I could see when I hauled myself up by the iron bars on the narrow window and peered out.

I was in what was known as the general reception cell, a room about forty feet square with rough stone walls that looked as if they might very well pre-date Cortez. There were about thirty of us in there which meant it was pretty crowded and the smell seemed compounded of urine, excrement and human sweat in equal proportions.

An hour of this was an hour too much. An indio got up and relieved himself into an over-flowing bucket and I moved out of the way hurriedly, took a packet of Artistas out of my pocket and lit one.

Most of the others were indios with flat, impassive brown faces, simple men from the back country who’d come to town looking for work and now found themselves in prison and probably for no good reason known to man.

They watched me out of interest and curiosity because I was the only European there which was a very strange thing. One of them stood up from the bench on which he sat, removing his straw sombrero and offered me his seat with a grave peasant courtesy that meant I couldn’t possibly refuse.

I sat down, took out the packet of Artistas and offered them around and hesitantly, politely, those closest to me took one and soon we were all smoking, amicably, the lighted cigarettes passing from mouth to mouth.

The bolt rattled in the door which opened to reveal the sergeant. ‘Señor Keogh, please to come this way.’

So we were being polite again? I followed him out and along the whitewashed corridor as the door clanged behind me. We went up the steps into a sweeter, cleaner world and crossed towards the administration block of the police barracks.

I had been here once before about four months previously to obtain a work permit and had been required to pay through the nose for it which meant that the jefe in Bonito was about as honest as the usual run of police chiefs.

The sergeant left me on a bench in a whitewashed corridor under the eye of two very military-looking guards who stood on either side of the jefe’s door clutching Mauser rifles of the type used by the Germans in the war. They ignored me completely, and after a while the door opened and the sergeant beckoned.

The room was sparsely furnished; desk, filing cabinet and not much else, except for a couple of chairs, one of which was occupied by my fat friend from the Hotel Blanco, the other by the jefe.

Janos lurched to his feet, and swayed there, propped up by his ivory stick, sweat shining on his troubled face. ‘A dreadful business, Mr Keogh, but I’m with you, sir, all the way.’

He subsided again. The jefe said, ‘I am Jose Ortiz, Chief of Police in Bonito, Señor Keogh. Let me first apologize for your treatment so far. A regrettable error on the part of my sergeant here who will naturally answer for it.’

The sergeant didn’t seem to be worrying too much about that and the jefe opened a file before him and studied it. He was a small, olive-skinned man in his fifties with a carefully trimmed moustache and most of his teeth had been capped with gold.

He looked up at me gravely. ‘A most puzzling affair, Señor Keogh. You say this man was stealing your wallet?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Then what has he done with it, señor? We have searched the stairs and the foyer of the hotel thoroughly.’

‘Perhaps he had an accomplice,’ I suggested. ‘There were several people milling around there.’

‘By God, he could be right,’ Janos cut in. ‘It could explain the whole thing.’

The jefe nodded. ‘Yes, that is certainly a possibility and on the whole, I am inclined to believe your story, señor, for the man is a known thief.’

‘That is very kind of you,’ I said gravely.

‘There was much in the wallet of importance?’

‘Twenty or thirty dollars, some rail and steamer tickets and my passport.’

He raised his eyebrows. ‘So? Now that is serious. More so than I had realized.’ He looked in the file again. ‘I see from your papers that you were registered as a British citizen. This is correct?’