Dirty Tricks

What a pleasure it was to be back! It was the small things I noticed most, the details I had forgotten. The constant rain of drips in the street from air-conditioning units, the puddles of condensation that form around your bottle of cold beer in the humid heat, the parked car that seems to move all by itself as someone further along bumps the whole row to get out, the streets studded with crown stoppers embedded in the warm asphalt. Above all it was the people, the men very beautiful, the women very handsome, both sexes pulsating with pride and drive and desire. Each moment of every day was a precious token of a way of life which I only now realized how much I had missed. I spent days at a time simply walking the streets or riding the collectivos, immersing myself in the rich and varied scenes on every side. Every night I would seek out the most crowded districts and mingle in the passing throng, exulting in the brutal, explicit, merciless, uncensored scenes I had been reading for too long in the ‘improved’ and improving versions which the English prefer to the original text.

My only regret was that the friends I had been looking forward to seeing again all seemed to have disappeared. I had been away for some time, of course, but it still seemed surprising that the entire group of which Carlos Ventura was the acknowledged leader had totally dispersed. Even many of the places where we used to meet, bars, restaurants and bookshops, had closed down or changed hands. It was almost as if a deliberate attempt had been made to erase all my memories. This absurd notion was strengthened when I bumped into one of my former students who had been on the fringes of the group I’ve just referred to. At first he claimed not to recognize me, so to jog his memory I mentioned a mistake in one of his essays which had become a running joke around the school. It was a piece describing the system of government. Jose had intended to say ‘the council of generals are responsible for running the country’, but instead of ‘running’ he had written ‘ruining’. To my amazement, he now denied any knowledge of this incident, and when I asked what had become of Carlos and the others he replied angrily that he had no idea who I was talking about, and abruptly took his leave.

I was mystified and saddened at first, but I soon convinced myself that it was all for the best. Any attempt to revive old friendships would have been doomed to failure. My circumstances had changed too much. Then I had been a temporary expatriate, a visiting foreigner with no means, no roots, no responsibilities and no future, here today and gone tomorrow. Now I am a man of substance, a permanent resident with long-term plans and investments. I no longer have anything in common with people whose idea of entertainment was an evening of beer, jazz and politics at some doubtful dive which a respectable citizen such as myself would think twice about entering.

I have reached the end of my narrative. Before you retire to consider your verdict, however, I should like to comment briefly on the spirit in which the application before this court has been presented. This country has a long and complex relationship with the United Kingdom, and one to which Her Majesty’s accredited representatives have not scrupled to appeal to in the hopes of influencing your judgement. At the risk of wounding your sensibilities, I would like to dispense with the diplomatic rhetoric for a moment. The fact of the matter is, I’m afraid, that my compatriots think of you, on the rare occasions such as this when they bother to think about you at all, as a bunch of gormless wops hanging about some clearing in the jungle waiting for the man from Del Monte to say yes.

I am not suggesting that the request for extradition should be rejected merely because it is delivered in a spirit of neo-colonialist arrogance rather than as a legal petition from one sovereign state to another. On the contrary, I have every confidence that this court will remain entirely unswayed by such extraneous factors. Its verdict will be delivered after duly weighing the facts, the majority of which are inconclusive and the rest in dispute. The case against me rests not on evidence acceptable to a court of law but on gratuitous moral censure. The British authorities argue that I have showed myself to be a ruthless self-seeker who would stop at nothing to better his social and financial status.

I have no quarrel with this assessment. On the contrary, I am justly proud of the energy and determination I displayed in turning my life around, and I strongly deprecate the attempt to make this the grounds for charging me with two murders which I did not commit. This is a cynical manoeuvre unworthy of the ideals to which the present government is supposedly committed, and to which I endeavoured to dedicate myself. In a free democratic society, law and morality can have nothing whatever to do with each other. The selfish instincts we all harbour in our breasts, and without which a market economy would instantly collapse, are of no concern to the law, which is purely conventional and utilitarian in nature, a highway code designed to minimize the possibility of accidents. It does not ask where you are coming from or where you are going, still less the reason for your journey. Such prying would rightly be regarded as unwarranted ideological interference typical of the now-discredited totalitarian regimes of Eastern Europe. As long as you obey the rules of the road, the law has no claim on you.

Now it may be objected that I have not obeyed those rules. This is perfectly true, and I have made no attempt to conceal the fact. On the contrary, I have admitted unlawfully disposing of my wife’s body, conspiring to kidnap and inflict grievous bodily harm on Clive Phillips, and lying to the police and the courts about these and other events. I am even prepared to admit that I may be guilty of involuntary manslaughter, since Karen’s death apparently occurred while she was locked in the boot of the BMW rather than immediately following the accidental blow to her head. Had any of these charges appeared on the extradition warrant, I should have had no option but to plead guilty and let the law take its course.

But they do not, for the simple reason that none of them fall within the terms of the relevant treaty between this country and the United Kingdom. Unable to request my extradition for the crimes I have committed, the British authorities have therefore resorted to fabricating charges in a category which is covered by the treaty, namely murder. The case they have argued before this court is neither more nor less than a blatant piece of expediency designed to obtain my forcible repatriation at any price. The British have no intention of trying me for murder, as they know perfectly well that they would be unable to obtain a conviction. If they get their hands on me, the spurious murder charges will instantly be dropped and replaced by the non-extraditable charges mentioned above. Such a procedure will naturally make a laughing-stock of these proceedings, this court and the republic it represents. It would be impossible to underestimate the extent to which anyone in Britain will care about that. Having served your purpose in this charade, you will be dismissed to go and play in your third-world sandpit until the next time the big boys need you.

I wish to thank the court for having let me make this lengthy statement, and to take this opportunity of acquiescing in advance with its verdict. The deluded humanist I once was would no doubt have drooled and snivelled after the manner of his kind, but I have grown up since then. I know there is no point in sulking because society is unjust, still less in trying to do anything to change it. There is no such thing as society, only individuals engaged in a constant unremitting struggle for personal advantage. There is no such thing as justice, only winners and losers. I have not deserved to lose, but if I do so, it will be without complaint or regret.

10 March

Dear Charles,

Needless to say I understand and share your anger and dismay, but I can assure you that suspicions of slackness this end are completely unjustified. Even H.E., who has taken the dimmest possible view of our hands-on intervention, will confirm that we had been given every reason to suppose that our application would be granted.

As yet I have been unable to ascertain what went wrong. For obvious reasons it would have been injudicious for me to appear in court, but having studied a transcript of the proceedings and assisted at a debriefing of our legal team I can confirm that there were no evidential revelations or technical hitches to justify the judges’ verdict. The accused delivered a rambling apologia for his infamies which made the worst possible impression on the court and everyone concerned assumed that the outcome was a foregone conclusion.

I have contacted the Justice Minister and communicated our displeasure to him in no uncertain terms. He was extremely apologetic, but would say only that the decision had been taken ‘in the interests of national security’. The Generalissimo himself has been uncontactable, and indeed all our normal lines of communication appear to have gone dead. To make matters worse H.E. is gloating no end over our discomfiture. If he tells me one more time that such delicate matters are best left to professional diplomats such as himself I shall scream. Thank goodness the Corporation has agreed to review its decision to broadcast the offending programme. It really would be too bad if we found ourselves thwarted by internal pressure here and were unable to respond in kind in our own backyard.