MAMista

MAMista
Len Deighton

Deep in Marxist Guerilla territory a hopeless war is being fought.The Berlin Wall is demolished. Marx is dead. Try telling that to Ramon and his desperate men hiding in the jungle cradling their AK 47s, dusting off the slabs of Semtex and dreaming of world revolution.MAMista takes us to the dusty, violent capital of Spanish Guiana in South America, and thence into the depths of the rain forest; the heart of darkness itself. There, four people become caught up in a struggle both political and personal, a struggle corrupted by ironies and deceits, and riddled with the accidents of war. They are four people who never should have found themselves bound together in a mission for revolution, which may be the sentence of death.Never has Deighton portrayed so accurately the terror and the tedium of war, or the shifting alliances and betrayals between people who have nothing to lose but their lives.This reissue includes a foreword from the cover designer, Oscar-winning filmmaker Arnold Schwartzman, and an introduction by Len Deighton, which offers a fascinating insight into the writing of the story.

Len Deighton

MAMista

Copyright

This novel is entirely a work of fiction.

The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)

This paperback edition 2011

First published in Great Britain by Century in 1991

Copyright © Len Deighton 1991

Introduction copyright © Pluriform Publishing Company BV 2011

Cover designer’s note © Arnold Schwartzman 2011

Len Deighton asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

MAMISTA. Copyright © Len Deighton 1991. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Source ISBN: 9780007385850

EPub Edition © JULY 2011 ISBN: 9780007450855

Version: 2017-08-10

Contents

Cover (#ue4cc8268-0d9a-5302-a9e9-08b2973b0a16)

Title Page

Copyright

Cover designer’s note

Introduction

1

The smell of the rain forest came on the offshore…

2

The man’s name was buried in a Spanish Guiana file…

3

Ralph Lucas was forty-five years old and every year of…

4

Ralph Lucas did not much like flying and he detested…

5

From the top floor of the American embassy building on…

6

Despite his US passport, Angel Paz had not been permitted…

7

The glass doors of Tepilo’s police headquarters were tinted bronze.

8

‘Speedy Gonzales’ – Thorburn’s twin-engined Beech – might have been…

9

‘It’s not unlike Florida.’ When Jack Charrington closed his desk,…

10

The jeep’s engine was not running smoothly, and that worried…

11

A photograph of Rosario, artfully soft-focused and with some red…

12

By the time that Rosario was fully awake, the MAMista…