Chapter 41

Less than forty-eight hours later, the whole country seemed to disintegrate. The government's regional commander in the north had rounded up a small number of reactionaries, and had intended, so the official line went, to bring them to trial. The suspects had been shackled and loaded into a truck for transportation south, and eventual questioning.

News reports suggested that the truck had encountered problems on the journey, losing braking power as it descended into a valley. The driver and his mate had leaped from the truck just in time to watch it fly though a crash barrier and roll down the hillside. To add insult to injury, pictures showed that the truck only fell about thirty feet, but rescue workers had taken six hours to get to the vehicle, by which time many of the injured had bled to death. Only two survived out of the original twenty-eight. Rioting broke out before the end of the evening newscast. Rebels bombed several police stations in what appeared to be well-rehearsed set pieces. Reports circulated of government troops deserting to the Nationalists as a result of terror and lack of wages. Lauren conferred with Elizabeth and Gustav and it was decided that the children would leave, cross the border and fly to Switzerland from Venezuela.

It was Emma who heard the vans first. Huge pre-war speakers bolted on top, megaphones of doom and destruction. Of course, Lauren would not have known if they were announcing the start of an uprising or the latest lottery winners. But the message was expected and simple.

'Leave now, go south. Move quickly, taking only what you can carry. The Nationalists are all murderers and won't spare you. If you're male and aged between twenty and forty then stay and defend.'

Lauren looked at Emma glumly. It had really happened, just as everyone had warned. They grabbed two suitcases each and packed in silence. Lauren took as much food and drink as she could carry in one suitcase, and clothes in the other. She hid some of her personal treasures high up in her cupboards, half hoping that if the house was ransacked that people would give up before finding her things. Her plan, a slight diversion from that agreed with Gustav and Elizabeth, was to drive as far south as she could, then ditch the car. Given the war, it would be easy to say it had been stolen. However, even before they had gone a couple of miles, Lauren was shocked to find a steady stream of refugees already heading south through Boquette. Indeed, rather than completing her journey to the Post Office, she made a U-turn in the road and went back home, her mind muddled with disbelief that she could have become involved in something so exciting, so deadly, so un- Swiss.

After their false start, they left once again at almost eleven o'clock. The sun loomed brilliantly overhead as Lauren turned for the last time to look at her home, the white ranch with the pool that she had come to regard her house, full of her children and her problems.