'If you want to go to bed,' said Ze, 'you don't have to invent a coup.'
'I'm serious.'
The seven people in the bar looked at the man for several seconds until they'd all seen his seriousness. They got up as one and went out into the street. Ze Coelho flicked his shoulder-length hair over the wolfskin collar of his floor-length woollen capote Alentejano and they started running down the narrow cobbled alleyway towards the square below.
They were not alone. A crowd was gathering in the Praca de Luis de Camoes and the words 'coup' and 'revolution' ricocheted off the statue in the middle of the square. After fifteen minutes the crescendo of excitement hit its top note with a shout to march on the PIDE/DGS headquarters in Rua Antonio Maria Cardoso. They entered the street from the Largo do Chiado and found another gang of people coming up from Rua Vitor Cordon.
Behind the arched gateway and high walls the doors to the building were shut and the front dark, but the faint glimmer in the windows told the crowd that there were lights on in the building somewhere. They hammered on the gates yelling incoherently. Ze stood in the middle of the street, punching the air with his fist and shouting 'Revolution!' and, inclined to go one step too far, 'Off with their heads.'
Windows opened at the top of the building and dark figures leaned out over the street. Four shots shattered the night air. The crowd split both ways down the street with screams and shouts. More shots followed them. Their boots thundered on the cobbles. Ze ran back up the hill and fell in a confusion of legs around him. He rolled over on the cobbles and, further down the street from in front of the PIDE building, he heard terrible noises coming from a man's throat. He checked the top of the building again but could see nothing. He crouched and ran back down the street, grabbed the man by his coat collar and hauled him up the hill. When he was safe he fell back and reached down to the choking man. His fingers found the slippery warmth of a neck wound.
Joaquim Abrantes had slept very badly. He woke up at six o'clock feeling groggy and bad-tempered, as if he'd spent the day before drinking. He tried to call his sons, but still couldn't get a line. He opened the window and looked out into the empty street. Something was wrong. The street should not have been empty. He sniffed the air, it was different, like the first whiff of spring after a long winter except that they were in the middle of spring already. A wild-eyed young man burst into the street from the direction of the elevador up to the Chiado. He raised his fist in the air and shouted to the empty street:
'IT'S OVER!'
He ran up the street towards the Rossio.
There were horns blaring and a faint seethe of chatter and singing. Abrantes leaned further out of the window. He wasn't wrong. People were singing in the street.
'This is bad,' he said to himself, and strode back to the telephone.
'What's bad?' asked Pica, standing by the bedroom door in her red silk dressing gown.
'I don't know yet, but it sounds bad. People are singing in the street.'
'Singing?' said Pica, both charmed and mystified that something really was happening. 'Ah, well, even if there has been a coup…'
'COUP!' roared Abrantes. 'You don't understand, do you? This isn't a coup. This is a revolution. The communists have arrived.'
'So what?' she said, shrugging herself off the door jamb. 'What are you worried about? Half your money's in Zurich. The other half's in'sao Paulo. Even the gold's out of the country…'
'Don't mention the gold,' growled Abrantes, wagging his finger. 'Don't even say the word "gold". That gold does not exist. It never existed. There never was any gold. Do you understand?!'
'Perfectly,' she said, and went back into the bedroom, slamming the door.
Abrantes pulled on his coat and went out into the street and walked towards the Terreiro do Paco and the river. The Praca do Comercio was full of troops, but they were all laughing and joking with each other. Abrantes moved amongst them, stunned.
At a little before 8.00 a.m. a column of tanks appeared from the barracks of the 7th Cavalry. Abrantes positioned himself in the arcade at the north of the square.
'Now we shall see,' he said to a soldier, who looked him up and down as if he was Neanderthal.
The column of tanks drew to a halt. The turret of the lead tank opened. A captain on the ground stepped forward. The lieutenant in the tank shouted down to him. His voice was clear in the fresh early morning and the total silence in the square.
'I have orders to open fire on you,' said the lieutenant, and the soldiers in the square shifted, 'but all I really want to do is laugh.'
The shifting stopped and a murmur ran around the square.
'Go ahead then,' said the captain.
The troops in the square cheered. The lieutenant held up his hand, splayed his fingers and pointed back to the column. The captain sent a platoon to the fifth tank and four of them clambered up on to its shoulders. The turret opened and an explosive colonel put his head out and found himself looking up at four rifles' barrels.
On the River Tagus the navy ship Almirante Gago Coutinho cruised to a halt in front of the Praca do Comercio, its guns pointing into the heart of the city. The troops and tanks in the square watched in silence, preparing for the first volley. Several minutes passed. No sound came from the ship. The guns didn't move. There was no signal until slowly one by one the ship's guns turned away from the city and faced the south bank of the Tagus. To the gunners it looked like a flock of pigeons had taken off as a thousand caps were flung into the air on the back of a tumultuous roar in the Praca do Comercio. Joaquim Abrantes turned and walked back up the Rua do Ouro.
Ze Coelho didn't get home until 10.00 a.m. He and his friends had taken the wounded man to the hospital and the nurses in the Urgencia, on seeing his bloodstained clothes, had singled him out and refused to let him leave until a doctor had examined him which took some time. They'd washed him as best they could but the wolf collar was still badly and irrevocably stained from the man's neck wound. His mother opened the door and screamed which brought his father out of the bedroom. His sister took Ze's coat and went to run a bath for him. The telephone rang. His father took the call. Ze and his mother watched in silence as the colonel spoke quietly and seriously, looking at the floor refusing to catch anyone's eye. He replaced the heavy Bakelite handset. Ze's sister appeared in the doorway.
'General Spinola,' he said, summoning a grave and quiet voice to communicate the full weight of the occasion, 'has asked me to go to the Largo do Carmo barracks. Prime Minister Caetano is there with his cabinet and I have been asked to persuade them to allow General Spinola to accept the unconditional surrender of the government.'
'Did you know about this?' asked his wife, her voice quavering with fear and shock at the terrifying implications for her and the children, had the coup turned out differendy and badly.
'No, and neither did the General. Apparently the coup was organized by the junior officers, but the General knows that Caetano won't surrender to them. The Prime Minister won't want power to fall into the hands of the mob.'
'He means the communists,' said Ze.
'And what have you been doing?' asked the colonel, giving his bloodstained son his eagle look.
'I was outside the PIDE headquarters when they opened fire on us. Some people were hit and we took one of them to hospital.'
Ze's mother had to sit down.
'The General said there'd been no casualties.'
'Well, you can tell him from me when you see him that more than one went down in Rua Antonio Maria Cardoso.'
'Did they bring anybody else into the hospital while you were there?'
'They locked me up in a room to prevent me from leaving.'