A Flag for Sunrise Read Online Free PDF Page A

anthropologist with a sinecure in the university at Compostela, a gambler and a great womanizer. Holliwell had always known him to be a passionate sympathizer with revolution.
    “Oscar and I used to have some great arguments,” Holliwell said. Apparently Oscar had stopped arguing. They had turned him—either with money or with the offer of a job in the States. It was a shame, Holliwell thought, and Oscar must feel very bad about it.
    “I suppose,” Holliwell said, “that in a couple of years, you’ll be asking me to get him a job up here.”
    “Frank—how about doing us a favor while you’re down there?”
    Holliwell buttered some French bread and said what he had decided he would say.
    “If you approach me with something like that, Marty, I’m supposed to publicize the approach. My professional association passed a resolution against doing favors for you guys.”
    “Your professional association,” Marty Nolan said humorously, “is a bunch of long-haired disorderly persons. Pinkos, Frank. Red rats.”
    “All anthropologists are brothers,” Holliwell said.
    “Suppose I ask how you voted on that resolution?”
    Holliwell put his bread down and set his fork beside it.
    “I abstained. I was in favor of the resolution but I felt compromised. Because of what I did in Nam. The favors.”
    “God,” Marty said soberly. “You’re an honest man, Frank.”
    “Well,” Holliwell told him, “there it is. As they used to say. What do you hear from Ho Chi Minh City?”
    Marty looked at him for a moment and finished his wine.
    “Not much. They arrested the Hoa Hao. A lot of them were friends of ours and nobody bothered to get them out. Look—what can I say? You want to know if I’m bitter? I’m not. Neither am I repentant. The other guys fought hard, they earned it.”
    “If you were bitter I wouldn’t blame you. You really came through the whole thing damn well.”
    Nolan put his own fork down. They had both stopped eating.
    “What should I do—run for Congress? Get myself a tent show in Orange County—I Know the Red Terror Firsthand? I’ll tell you something, Frank—the night they dug me out I was in a hospital compound with this old Spanish priest. The guy was walking up and down chain smoking and they’d had him under the ground longer than I was. He said to me—Hombre, this was nothing. They buried me alive in Murcia in thirty-eight and it was a lot harder.”
    Holliwell laughed and shook his head.
    “Frank,” Marty Nolan said, “let me tell you about what’s going on down south. I guarantee, you’ll love it.”
    Holliwell shrugged; Nolan was leaning across the table at him, his eyes shining with good-natured intrigue.
    “Down in Tecan, on the east coast, even as we sit here—some of our countrymen find themselves in a state of social and spiritual crisis.”
    “Let’s let them work it out for themselves,” Holliwell said.
    “All I want to know, Frank, is what they’re really up to.”
    “Ask Oscar what they’re up to—he’s on the payroll, right? Speaking as an American taxpayer, I don’t give a shit.”
    “Oh, Frank,” Marty said. He sat back in his chair as though scandalized. “Information is a positive force. It furthers communication. It reduces isolation and clarifies motives. The more everybody knows about what everybody else is doing, the less misunderstanding there is in the world.”
    “I’m going to Compostela. I’m not setting foot in fucking Tecan. It’s a rathole and it gets on my conscience.”
    “Nonsense,” Marty said, “it’s a wonderful place. They have American-style hardware stores and the President speaks English just like we do here on Court Street.”
    “And he’s wonderful too.”
    “He certainly is,” Marty said. “He’s a Rotarian.”
    “Marty,” Holliwell said, looking around for the waiter, “get off my back. I’m not going there and I’m not doing you any favors.”
    When the waiter came near, Nolan ordered them both a stinger. A