Free A Flag for Sunrise by Robert Stone Page A

Washington. I can tell you that it was an occasion of terror in my house, my parents were quite unsophisticated in some ways. It was a perfectly amiable letter. It thanked me. It was signed by an assistant. A typical letter.”
    “A form letter,” Justin corrected him.
    “Yes, a form letter.” He lit his Winston and blew the smoke upward. “Under that government people often disappeared. When our great hope Matos became President it was the same. It’s the same now. When Matos was President there was a man from your country in the capital—he was the head of your intelligence here and Matos’ great friend. Last year his name was in the papers a little because of the scandals in Washington. We believe now that he knew a great deal about who disappeared and why. It was strange to read about him in the newspapers. He seemed a foolish, trivial man, almost likable.”
    Justin said nothing.
    “I’ll call you Justin,” Godoy said.
    “It’s been my name so long,” she said, “I guess it’s my name.”
    “If you tell your superiors that you agree to leave—how long can you keep the mission station?”
    “Well,” Justin said, “it’s company property to start with and they’ll take it right back. There are medicines there and furniture, so I guess they’ll reoccupy it and we can be out in a week.”
    Godoy shook his head in exasperation.
    “No good,” he said. Before she could ask what he meant he asked her: “What will you do in the States?”
    “I don’t know. I’m going to laicize anyway. I suppose I’ll look fora job.” She touched her hair in confusion. “I’m afraid to think about it.”
    “I want you to keep the station open. For a month anyway. You can stall. Say that Father Egan is too ill to travel.”
    “Father Egan will die if he stays.”
    “All right then, send Egan back. But keep open any way you can. I’ll help you to keep open.”
    “But why?” she asked him.
    “Because,” Godoy said, “I have friends who are doing illegal work. They are going to make a foco in the mountains. They need a place on the coast for a while.”
    “They’re going to fight?”
    “Not here. But not so far away. You see, for years it’s all been smoke.” He permitted himself a quick smile. “But it’s time now.”
    “Oh, my gosh,” Justin said. Her heart soared.
    “So we need you if you can help us. If you want to.”
    “Thank you for asking me,” Justin said. “For trusting me.”
    “I have good reasons to trust you,” Godoy said, “and it’s easy to ask.” He watched her, and she knew that he was measuring her hesitation.
    “It’s not only for the use of the station. We need you too if you think you can help. If you feel you can’t—well, I understand.”
    “I will,” Justin heard herself say. “I’ll help you any way I can. Not only with the station. There’s nothing I want more.”
    “I don’t try to seduce you in this,” Godoy said. “You have to make your own decision.”
    “I have no family,” Justin told him, smiling. “No special home. Where people need me that’s where I go. See, I’m lucky that way.”
    She could not read his look. Suddenly she wanted him to reach out and touch her in some way, clap her on the shoulder, shake her hand, give some human token of what they had entered into. But he did not move and neither did she.
    “This is work of armed struggle, so people may get killed. I won’t deceive you.”
    “I don’t come from a pacifist tradition,” she said. Immediately it struck her as a cold and pedantic thing to say. She kept wondering how she must appear to him. That he would ask, that he would saythat she herself could help—it meant he must esteem her. Surely, she thought, he must.
    Godoy looked at his watch.
    “We’ll go,” he said.
    She walked beside him toward the dark square; somewhere beyond it there was music, uncertainly amplified, and the noise of a crowd.
    “Maybe,” he said as they walked, “we can arrange your status