was a sort of tea for the fever that helped a little....'
'You were formerly stations at Cartagena. What was the situation there as regards sickness?'
'Much worse, sir. A thousand soldiers died of the yellow sickness. That was when I was transferred.'
'Was the work there the same?'
'More or less, except we had to guard the mule train.'
'So you did leave the city at times?'
'Yes, sir. Sometimes for a week.'
'And what was the mule train carrying? You don't need to tell me. Gold. What else interests the Spanish? Well now, all that gold to protect ... the garrison must have been larger than here ... perhaps a thousand?'
'Ten thousand, sir,' says the soldier proudly.
Hans pretends to be impressed and whistles softly.
'And galleons no doubt to take away the gold? When all those sailors came ashore there must have been some right brawls in Cartagena,
Big Picture calling Shifty
We return to staff headquarters, which we have set up in the Governor's spacious bedroom on the ground floor. This is the coolest room in the house but even so the heat is oppressive and we must keep the windows covered with mosquito netting which cuts off the occasional eddy of air that is the closest approximation to a breeze. There is a huge ornate curtained bed where exhausted partisans who arrive with dispatches can rest, where the staff officers can catch an hour's sleep or satisfy the sudden sex hungers that occur during the long hours of intense mental concentration without sleep.
We often work naked in the Governor's bedroom, seeing the maps with our whole bodies, performing ritual copulations in front of the maps, animating the maps with our sperm. The key map is Big Picture, showing the present area of occupation from Cartagena on the Atlantic seaboard to the Pearl Islands in the Pacific and northwards to a point a hundred miles north of Panama City. Green pins on the map show cities occupied by the partisans. Black pins designate areas occupied by the Spanish.
The key to Big Picture are ledger books.... We are now transcribing into the ledger books information obtained from the prisoners.
Cartagena. Location on map. Black pin. Estimated strength of garrison: ten thousand soldiers. Strongly fortified. Has resisted a number of pirate attacks. Gold terminal. Heavily armed convoys pick up gold here. Hygienic conditions worse than Panama. Recent epidemic of yellow fever.
These ledgers indicate no only the strength of garrisons and the movement of ships, but also the whole way of life of the enemy, what the soldiers do, what the officers do, what food they eat, what illnesses they suffer from, how they think, and what they can be expected to do. Rather like studying past performance to pick the winner of a horse race. But the Spanish, since they consist entirely of past performance, are much more predictable than horses. Massively encased in their colonial architecture, their forts and galleons, their uniforms, gold, portraits and religious processions, they move like ponderous armored knights to ends the was can predetermine.
In addition to Big Picture, there are also much more detailed maps of smaller areas showing locations of arms caches, farmhouses belonging to partisans, streams, wells, and sketches of animals native to the region. As messages come in, the green pins are spreading north and east and south along the Pacific coast. The whole southern isthmus of Panama is now in our hands.
We study the maps, concentrating on Big Picture. What exactly will the Spanish do? No doubt respond after their kind—heavy, massive, and slow as their galleons. They will dispatch galleons from Cartagena to land troops on the east coast, who will then move west towards Panama City. They will dispatch galleons from Lima to the Bay of Panama to land troops above and below Panama City, in what they fondly think is a crushing pincer movement.
