“It seems that my term as el presidente is coming to a rather precipitate end,” he told her dryly, “and I must make my plans. I wish to go to New York, and Senator Brandon has very graciously agreed to lend his assistance.”
“But el presidente, how can I help?”
“You are also acquainted with Díaz, and your husband was once a captain in his command. I wish to get a message directly to the general, and there are few I can trust to deliver it for me. Every man thinks only of himself at a time like this, and I admit that I am doing the same. When I heard that you were in Mexico again, I implored General Luna to find you for me and ask you to come here.”
“I wasn’t asked, I was abducted,” Ginny said sharply, “and I don’t even know where—where my husband is or if he’s still alive. Luna will tell me nothing. He is detestable.”
Shrugging, Lerdo said, “He is a Spaniard, and they are all very arrogant. I would not have allowed him to be here were it not for the fact that he has high connections in Madrid. Ah, I had thought to make a difference in Mexico, to see my country become wealthy again, as she was long ago.”
Ginny remained silent. She had heard different tales of Lerdo’s rule, of his squandering tax money on personal vices instead of the reforms he touted so highly.
But eventually she found herself agreeing to speak to Porfirio Díaz for him, to secure a safe escort for his retreat from Mexico.
21
A steady pounding thud penetrated slowly into his numb brain. It sounded like the slam of metal against metal, loud and heavy. Steve tried to move, but was pinioned as if by a large object, his arms and legs splayed.
Gradually, he surfaced from the prolonged sleep that had rendered him unconscious, his brain struggling to assimilate the noise with the cause. Panting, he lay still.
Thick, noxious fumes clouded the air, stinging his nose and eyes. He blinked against it. Something struck him on the arm, and he realized that he could move after all, though it was slow and painful.
“It is time you woke up.”
The voice came at him from the darker shadows, a casual observation. He blinked again, and his vision began to focus better, distinguishing between the shadows around him.
“What…where the hell am I?”
“Don’t try to talk yet. Just listen.”
A familiar darkness broken by wavering patches of light from creosote torches…the stench of urine and sweat…the rattle and clink of chains…a steady moaning like that of a wounded animal…
Suddenly he knew where he was, and an irrational panic rose up in a choking wave. He’d worked in a mine once before and knew that smell, knew those sounds….
“Christ! No, I’ve got to get out of here!”
“Por Dios, stay down,” the voice muttered, urgent now, “or you will leave here bent over the end of a sword!”
It took all his will not to leap up, and a cold sweat broke out. Bile rose in his throat, memories suddenly stark and real. The doctor…
But the face that hovered over him with an anxious expression was not the smiling, unctuous face of his old tormentor. The doctor was dead now…dead. No, whatever nasty trick of fate that had brought him here, it was not the same.
This time, there had been a trial, a farcical exercise in frustration and futility as soon as he had recovered enough to make an appearance. He was taken from his cell to a room, where he was swiftly condemned for the crime of smuggling.
It was almost laughable.
The rifles he’d smuggled across the border were not the ones presented to the magistrado as evidence, but it didn’t really matter anyway. Someone knew about it and had betrayed them. Who would have known? Had Butch Casey and Paco been caught as well?
It was all still so fuzzy, most of the details still foggy…the soldiers entering the cantina, ranging around the room like scavengers, hunting.
Thinking back, he would almost swear that the soldiers were interested in him alone that night, had been looking for him. Only a few peasants were arrested; they had ignored most there, save the few men they scooped up and charged as bandits.
“Guilty,” the magistrado had pronounced with barely a glance at the prisoner standing before him in shackles and bruises. He had rifled some papers, then scrawled his signature across the bottom and motioned for Steve to be taken away.
The sentence was predictable—thirty years hard labor. A guard had nudged him, laughing when he stumbled, then slammed a fist against the side of his head as he struggled for balance.
“Gringo pig! You will be with us a long time, so you had best learn your duty now, filth! The price of resistance can be painful…crawl back to your cell like the dog you are!”
The lash of the whip had cracked against his back and he had sucked in a deep breath, forced to go on hands and knees the long way back through the tunnels, while the guards beat him and prodded him with whips and clubs. By the time he was returned to the tiny cell, his hands and knees were shredded and bleeding, and his back and ribs ached where the whip had flayed him.
Panting for breath, sucking in huge gulps of fetid air to fill his laboring lungs, Steve had crouched on the cold rock floor of his cell like the dog they had named him.
Like before, only his pride sustained him, that and a stubborn will to live. This time he was better prepared for what lay ahead. He had learned through the years that compromise was not the same thing as surrender, that if a man lived to fight another day, it was a victory of sorts.
The other two men in his cell moved slightly, silently, as
