MAMista by Len Deighton

Curl, ‘Benz has got one.’
    â€˜Is Benz right for us?’ the President asked.
    â€˜Who else is there?’ asked Curl. The President stared right through him as he drew upon his prodigious memory. Hecould quote long passages from documents that Curl had watched him skim through, seemingly without much interest. Curl waited.
    â€˜There is Doctor Guizot,’ said the President.
    â€˜At present under house arrest,’ said Curl without hesitation.
    The President didn’t respond to that item of information. Curl bit his lip. He knew that his over-prompt reply had been noted as evidence that Curl – like the CIA and the Pentagon too – were prejudiced against Doctor Guizot’s liberal policies. The President’s next remark confirmed this: ‘We always back the Admiral Benzes don’t we?’
    â€˜Mr President?’
    â€˜America always puts its resources behind these anachronistic strong-arm men. And we are always dismayed when they are toppled, and we get spattered with the crap. Korea, Vietnam … Marcos, Noriega. Why do our “experts” in State fall in love with these bastards?’
    â€˜Because there are sometimes no alternatives,’ said Curl calmly. ‘Could we support communist revolution, however pure its motives?’ It was a rhetorical question.
    â€˜Sometimes, John, I wonder how it happened that in 1945 the State Department didn’t offer military aid to the Nazis.’
    â€˜I’ve heard people say communism might have collapsed more quickly if we had.’
    The President did not hear him. ‘Doctor Guizot. Not that bastard Benz. Not after that slavery business and the human rights investigation.’
    Curl wanted to point out that the slavery allegations referred to peóns allowed a strip of land on the big haciendas in return for labour. But the President had paused only to clear his throat and, in his present state of mind, such remarks would not help.
    The President continued: ‘Yes, the liberal press would make Benz into some kind of Hitler. Better Guizot. Guizothas a chance of reconciling the liberal middle-class element with the Indians, peasants and workers.’
    â€˜Guizot is committed to removing the literacy qualification for voters.’
    â€˜And that makes him sound like a dangerous radical, eh John?’
    Curl didn’t smile. ‘A split vote could mean a victory for the Marxists.’ When no response came he added, ‘Karl Marx didn’t die in Eastern Europe; he sailed to South America and is alive and well and flourishing there.’
    â€˜Just like all those Nazi war criminals, eh John?’ He scratched his head. ‘I recall there are other – rival – guerrilla outfits down there.’
    â€˜Several,’ said Curl, who’d spent the previous couple of hours reading up on the subject. ‘But none that we could cosy up to.’
    â€˜Are you quite sure? What about the Indians?’
    â€˜The Indian farmers have a Marxist leader who calls himself Big Jorge. But Big Jorge rules in the coca-growing regions and lets the drug barons go unmolested in exchange for a piece of the action.’
    â€˜Ummm. I see what you mean,’ said the President.
    â€˜The revenues from oil will bring prosperity enough to establish someone in political power for at least a decade. Whatever creed the government preaches, the oil money will make their politics seem worth copying elsewhere in Latin America. Give it to the Marxists and we will be perpetuating the myth of Marxist economics. We will live to regret it.’
    The President’s face didn’t change but there was a rough edge to his voice: ‘Sit in my chair and you worry less about the teachings of Karl Marx. My supporters are inclined to think crime here at home is the number one issue on the ticket, John. Crime and drug abuse. Stop the drugs and we reduce violent crime. That’s the way the voters see