Five o’clock in the morning. The sky over Lisbon was still ink-blue—but inside the Diário de Notícias printing house at the city center, war had already broken out.
The steam-powered rotary press roared like a caged beast. Massive cylinders spun at blinding speed.
Fresh black ink rolled evenly over the lead type. Jo?o’s words—once confined to a single sheet in a damp archive—were now an army of lead soldiers, marching down paper conveyors, deploying across Portugal.
Editor Lopes stood at the heart of the workshop, holding the first proof of the front page.
Jo?o Fernandes’s byline anchored the central column. The headline, bold and unyielding, stabbed the page like a black dagger.
Lopes inhaled deeply. The thick scent of ink was, to him, the perfume of victory.
“Faster!” he barked at the foreman. “Faster!
Before dawn breaks, I want this paper on every street corner in Lisbon!”
———
Dawn had barely cracked the horizon when newsboys burst into alleys and plazas, arms laden with stacks of the Diário de Notícias.
“Extra! Extra! Diário de Notícias special feature!
‘ONE NATION. ONE PARTY. ONE LEADER!’
Condemns the Left for betraying the nation!”
———
In a refined café in Chiado, gentlemen in three-piece suits sipped their morning tea.
An elderly man—aristocratic, spectacles perched on his nose—read the passage on “order” and nodded slowly.
“Brilliantly put,” he said to his companion, tapping a line in the article.
“‘To obey order is to serve the nation!’ How perfectly clear. Isn’t this exactly what we’ve lacked? Those leftists shout slogans until the country collapses.”
———
Down at the docks, in a makeshift shack of tarps and rotting wood, dockworkers huddled around a single copy of the paper.
“‘The sick do not need philosophy. They need a scalpel,’” growled a burly laborer, frowning at the headline.
“Boss, that makes sense. We’ve struck for months—lost our jobs, and now we’re starving.”
An older worker sighed. “The writer says the Minister plugged the treasury’s leak. That the state has money again.”
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“If the state has money… maybe we get work. Maybe we eat. I won’t be fooled into prison by radicals again.”
The foreman stared at the paper, eyes flickering. He said nothing.
But he knew—the hearts of his men, and his own, were fracturing.
———
In the library of the University of Lisbon, the air hung so heavy it seemed ready to drip.
Students crowded around a bulletin board where a copy of the Diário de Notícias had been pinned.
“Shameless!” cried Carlos, the student leader, jabbing at the headline.
“‘One leader’? Do they mean to enslave us to a dictator?”
But this time, no chorus rose in support.
A thin boy with wire-rimmed glasses pushed his spectacles up his nose and murmured, “But… some in our ranks are fanatically pro-Soviet…”
“What did you say?” Carlos whirled on him.
“I mean no harm,” the boy shrank back. “I only think… feeding people matters too. If we can’t eat, what good are ideals?”
Whispers spread. The once-united student front now showed visible cracks—split by a single, surgical article.
S?o Bento Palace (Prime Minister’s Residence).
Salazar showed no excitement. He sat behind his vast desk, the Diário de Notícias pinched between his fingers. His eyes scanned Jo?o’s text—back and forth—his face unreadable.
After a long silence, he set the paper down.
“This piece,” he said to his secretary, “is poisonous.”
“Yes, Prime Minister. It aligns perfectly with our doctrine.”
“No.” Salazar shook his head, his gaze sharp as flint.
“It’s too poisonous. Too precise. This prose… this grasp of the human pulse—I don’t recall having such an invisible ally.”
He rose, walked to the window, gazed out over Lisbon’s rooftops.
“Find out who this Jo?o Fernandes is.”
“I want to know who he is, where he works, and… why he wrote this.” His voice was glacial.
“If he’s sincere, we can use him. But if he seeks to wield us for some hidden end… men like that are more dangerous than the Left.”
———
Meanwhile, in Lisbon’s old quarter, a silent war brewed.
Deep in a shadowed alley, the editorial office of A Batalha—clandestine revival of the old anarchist press—reeked of smoke and sweat.
No roaring presses here. Only the creak of hand-cranked mimeograph machines.
“Comrades! Emergency!” The editor slammed his fist on the table, waving the Diário de Notícias.
“They’ve branded us traitors! If we don’t strike back, the workers will be seduced!”
“But their argument is airtight. We can’t match it in one night…”
“We don’t fight logic—we fight loyalty!” he roared. “We tell the workers: who is the real enemy!”
After hours of furious debate, by dawn a fresh mimeographed supplement of A Batalha began circulating in factories and slums:
“TEAR OFF THE MASK OF THE FASCIST PEN-PUSHERS!”
Their “scalpel” is nothing but a butcher’s blade in the dictator’s hand!
Their “order” is the order that lets the rich rob in peace while the poor starve!
Salazar balanced the books? He balanced them with Portuguese blood to please bankers!
This is not love—it is betrayal!
We are no one’s dogs. We are the voice of Portugal’s workers.
Those sycophants hiding in archives, begging for crumbs—they are the watchdogs of the old regime!
———
Now, across Lisbon, the storm broke.
On one side: the Right, waving the Diário de Notícias, chanting Order! Stability!
On the other: the Left, brandishing A Batalha, shouting Freedom! Bread!
And in the Third Division of the Lisbon Archives and Audit Bureau—
Jo?o watched the thunderheads roll in from the west.
He waited.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
Three knocks—steady, forceful, inevitable—shattered the bureau’s stagnant silence.
The old clerk by the door jolted, his pen clattering to the floor.
Trembling, he rose and opened the door.
Pale light sliced through the gloom—and fell upon Jo?o’s rigid silhouette.
His colleagues froze. Despair etched on every face as they stared at the three dark figures in the doorway.
The man in front swept the room with hawk-like eyes—then locked onto Jo?o.
“Which of you is Mr. Jo?o?”
“The Prime Minister requests your presence.
Don’t keep the car waiting.”
