Terror grips the South American country of Colonia as retired US diplomat John Pauley returns to his old embassy. He is adviser to the chairman of a congressional committee charged with investigating the justice now promised by a government by a government strengthened by a new election.
John Pauley must reluctantly abandon his role in an amateur production of Shakespeares Coriolanus when the chairman requests his help. The chairman brings with him his staff assistant Gail Arthur. Terrorist chaos reigns as the three arrive. The terrorists dispute the new trials of previous defendants charged with human rights violations including the murder of an American girl.
The Americans find haven in the residence of the US ambassador in Juan de Sols, Garfield Jameson, the assistant ambassador when John was stationed there.
Spencer Rawson, a callow and unpopular junior officer at the embassy, is kidnaped, perhaps to coerce the embassy into withdrawing its strong support for the government crackdown. The foreign ministry obtains his release. Inevitably, he and Gail find much in common.
Crack journalist Manuela Alvarez sees the significance of the increase in terror, the government’s moves to confront it and the abduction of the American...
Echoing Shakespeare, the army puts down a resurrection led by Alfredo, the leader of the rebels who call themselves vulcanos, from the Spanish for vulcan, the Roman god of fire.
Federico Morales courageously and skillfully leads the government forces in a decisive defeat of Alfredo and the vulcanos. Morales is lionized for his victory and offered the honorific Caudillo, or leader, a long-unused title.
Morales balks at the proffered title, unable to muster the required humility the occasion demands. He insults the officials offering award of the title and ends up castigated as an enemy of the people.
Morales flees to Alfredo and joins his rebel troops for a planned assault on the capital.
John, Manuela, the chairman and Spencer turn up in Coriola where the rebels are preparing for their attack on the capital. Comfortable in a deserted motel, the four are incommunicado while the preparations progress. Spencer doesn’t mind as long as he can be with Manuela. One of his kidnappers, the young Pedro, turns up at the motel as liaison between the rebels and the embassy group. Spencer soon sees Pedro as a rival for Manuela.
One of his old mentors, Mendoza, visits Morales’s mother and begs for her intercession to forestall the impending bloodbath. He succeeds, she does and Morales goes to the capital. There he achieves a peace treaty. Alfredo and the other rebels greet the treaty with hostility. They fall upon Morales, brutally killing him.
Manuela gets the whole story from Pedro, an eyewitness. The rebels melt away. The embassy four return to the capital.
Gail is curious about the room arrangements at the Coriola motel and the role Pedro played in their adventure. Spencer rediscovers Gail.
Federico Morales’s brother Gabriel, awaiting retrial for the murder of the American embassy daughter, hangs himself in his prison cell. The rebels are badly split over what do next. Discipline decays. A majority favor a peace treaty; this causes the militant minority to walk out, vowing to wage war on the appeasers as well as the government.
Left behind by the dispersing vulcanos, poor Pedro has no place to go. He tries Manuela’s apartment but finds her husband has returned. The embassy four lend him money and Spencer helps him find a job in garage.
The terror continues at a low level, but with the Morales brothers both dead, John, the chairman and Gail prepare to leave Colonia. The ambassador holds a farewell dinner at which Manuela’s husband sings. Spencer and Gail part with vows of meeting again.
Home again, John laments that he missed the performance of Coriolanus with his youthful understudy but then decides he was in the play more down in Colonia than i
