300 Days of Sun (24 page)

“For centuries few ­people have dared to live out there on these sandy uncertainties,” said Klaus. “But the fisherman will take the risk. The sand moves. The shore creeps to the east even as his feet seem to be standing firm. But all he wants is a house with a bamboo ceiling, a reliable boat, his tools, and the great wide sea full of fish.”

“You are an idealist.”

“Does that appeal to you?”

“Yes.”

“Then you are a free spirit, Alva. I like that.”

She had laughed. “My father used to call me a free spirit, but you know something? I wasn't. Not really. I acted the part because it was expected, but I was always a worrier, though I took pains to disguise it because worriers never seemed like too much fun. But don't you worry. I promise I will never give you cause to worry.”

A few hours later, she collected her new passport from the embassy, and took the train south.

 

 

i

T
he silver Mercedes accelerated. Eduardo Walde and I were in the back, Ribeiro in the passenger seat. As we headed for the motorway and Faro, I wondered what I was going to do about the rental car parked at the Italian restaurant, but I put it out of my mind.

“I gather that you recently reissued your mother's book,” I said.

“I did.”

“Were the excised pages included?”

“Yes, though not in quite that form.”

I hesitated, unsure whether I was ready to believe whatever he was going to tell me. “What Esta wrote about the other Germans who stayed on here—­was any of that actually true, or was it just a dramatic twist to her story?”

Eduardo took his time, then looked me in the eye. “It was true. Many of the ex-­Nazis who spent the war in Lisbon and Estoril escaped to South America to avoid the trials in Nuremberg. Others remained, becoming more confident as the British and Americans failed to get them repatriated.”

“And the Lisbon Pact?”

“There were always rumours that the so-­called Iron Nazis remained in Portugal to keep their ideology alive. But Karl and Esta wanted nothing to do with these ­people. They chose to live in the south, where life is simpler. Soon they have children: me and my sister Carolina. But still the difficulty doesn't entirely go away. The problem is, ­people like the Himmelreichs have access to great wealth in a very poor country. The money makes it easy for them to influence the way business is done. They change the rules. They control trade.”

He was watching for my reaction.

“Maybe you should have spoken to Ian Rylands after all,” I said.

“Maybe that is precisely why I didn't.”

I was uneasy, yet fascinated at the same time. “Why did you republish it?”

Walde exhaled, and looked away. “Because nothing has changed.”

I waited for him to explain further but he did not.

“If the story is true, was it you—­the boy who was snatched from the beach?”

“That's what my mother told me, when . . .” He stopped. “I can't remember it happening.”

“And her confrontation with Himmelreich?”

“She was a brave woman. She kept that to herself for years afterwards.”

“What about the man who warned her off, after the shooting at the restaurant?”

“Who knows? Obviously, as in many places in the decades after the war, there were quiet watchers who never left.”

“So why did Esta write the book, then? Because she was very brave, or because she was scared?”

“A little of both, maybe. Maybe she just wanted their position on record, that her husband was no Nazi. In the end, even when it was published by a small New York imprint, hardly anyone bought it, or even knew about it. It was too soon after the war. No one wanted to read books about it. Everyone had their own story, and too much was raw.”

“But now they do.” I thought of the demonstrations in Faro, the fiercely fought local elections and the way everyone was looking to blame others. I wondered what Walde's motives were in publishing the unexpurgated version in Portuguese.

“The original manuscript of
The Alliance
was in a safe-­deposit box in a Lisbon bank. ‘If I should die in suspicious circumstances,' my mother had written, in her handwriting, not typewritten, on the papers. I found it about five years ago, realised parts of this manuscript had never seen the light of day. We must assume that she cut them on the grounds of personal safety or perhaps the publishing house would not take the risk of printing them.”

“There are all kinds of reasons why it would have been hard to publish. But you included it in your edition?”

“A carefully edited version, as I said. The name Himmelreich doesn't feature.”

“That was a real name?”

“Yes.”

“What happened after the end of the book?”

He paused before responding. “Life was complicated. Karl and Esta stayed in Portugal because this is a country that did not judge their relationship. They waited a long time for her divorce. The Salazar dictatorship was still in place. The press was censored, and the bulk of the rural populace was still illiterate in any case. The ordinary ­people of Portugal were poor, yet—­thanks to the economist Salazar, the country had made a very impressive profit from the war. Portugal's gold reserves had increased tenfold. There was controversy about Portugal's Nazi gold but Salazar argued that it was legitimate payment. The dispute would never really be resolved.”

We had reached the red suspension bridge over the river I had crossed earlier.

“Until 1974—­April twenty-­fifth—­this was known as the Salazar bridge.”

“The date of the revolution?”

“The Carnation Revolution. The popular overthrow of Salazar's Estado Novo—­his authoritarian New State,” said Walde. “The military sent to restore order put flowers in the barrels of their weapons to show they would not fire. It was wonderful.”

We sat in silence for a few moments.

“But in the south, Karl and Esta worked hard,” I prompted. “Why did they choose the hotel trade?”

“When he graduated from university, my father was offered a position with a National Socialist organisation named Kraft Durch Freude—­strength through joy. It was known as KdF. If one thinks of a Nazi organisation, one automatically assumes it will be very unpleasant, but such was not the case with this one. It was intended to provide leisure activities and travel for ordinary German workers, especially those who had never previously had the opportunity—­or the means—­to go abroad. Under the system, the workers had a right to paid holidays and a certain amount of time for leisure each year, even the temporary and other casual workers. In its way, it was most enlightened. Egalitarian, too: the berths on the cruise ships were allocated by ballot despite the fact that all classes were on board.

“Before the war, the KdF had a fleet of ships and river cruisers, and the trips it offered were easily affordable by even the lowliest factory worker. The worst one could say is that as its ultimate aim was to keep the workforce in good health and spirits, it was contributing to the grand project. Of course there was an element of propaganda . . . not only were the workers grateful, but it broadcast a clear message of confident success to other countries.

“Millions of ­people took the opportunity it offered, and before the war it was the largest tourism industry in the world. The KdF built an enormous spa and hotel complex on the island of Rügen. You might have heard about that.”

“Yes, I think I do remember seeing pictures of it once. A television documentary perhaps.” In my mind's eye I could see the monolithic ruins, rows of Soviet-­style blocks facing the North Sea.

“Then the concept was expanded across Europe, beginning with boat trips around the Baltic Sea, and the coast of Norway. But soon the voyages were more ambitious, to the sunny south. Spain, Italy—­and Portugal.

“My father was involved in the planning of the routes before the war. I think he took the job to tread water while he waited to see how the political situation would develop. When war came, not only did he have contacts in other countries but he was also a linguist. He made the perfect intelligence agent.”

Sitting in the limousine with Eduardo Walde and his lawyer, I had to assume that the book was not completely disingenuous and that his father really had worked against the Nazi machine. I was uncomfortably aware that I couldn't count on it, though. I couldn't count on anything.

“When the KdF ship the
Wilhelm Gustav
came to Lisbon in 1938, my father was on board. She sailed from Hamburg and went on to Madeira. A lovely ship. Carried fifteen hundred passengers. She even had a Musikhalle—­a ballroom with orchestra. She was sunk in the Baltic Sea in 1945 by a Soviet torpedo with more than nine thousand refugees on board, half of them children, while it was evacuating German civilians and officials and military from Poland as the Red Army closed in.”

I looked away, involuntarily. Beyond the car window, scrubby, nondescript hills rose and fell away as the smooth carriageway of the A2 unspooled. The powerful engine of the car seemed to float above the tarmac as it covered the kilometres. I would have bet anything that European Union money had built this road. It was a far cry from the journey Esta detailed in the book, of her journey south when the dust and heat made driving unbearable during the hot afternoons. I was covering the whole distance twice in one day.

Eduardo steered the discussion back on track. “My father knew about travel and vacations, how to provide everything in one place—­if not on a ship, then on a rocky piece of coastland. The hotel at Horta das Rochas became a successful business. Other resort developments on the Algarve coast copied their model. But it was not, as my parents hoped, a world away from postwar politics. The threat from the Himmelreichs seemed to recede, but where there is big money, big crime follows. Bribery for building contracts. Blackmail of officials. Timeshare scandals.”

“Organised crime,” I said, thinking of Vale Navio.

“The trouble is,” Eduardo went on, “that those who shape the world have a vested interest in pretending that parts of the same story can be kept separate. Nothing is ever completely separate, Joanna.”

In the use of my name, Walde sounded both sad and almost avuncular.

“What exactly are we talking about, Senhor Walde?”

“Call me, Eduardo, for God's sake. If we are talking about this, all formality is over. In more than one unpleasant instance when the chancers and criminals moved in, differences were resolved by violence. More than once, a child was kidnapped and held to ransom.

“But we wanted no part of any get-­rich-­quick schemes. Why would we want to get involved in timeshare scams? We held firm when pressure was put on us. My sister Carolina's Portuguese husband Luiz Vicente went to the police with what we knew about the criminal element infiltrating the leisure developments.

“For his trouble, Luiz was attacked and their child was taken. It all happened in the garden of the family house on the edge of Horta das Rochas, very quickly, one Sunday afternoon. Who takes a child? It's either someone with a problem—­a woman, usually, in those cases—­or it's someone with a grudge, someone who wants leverage, or someone who wants money. There were reasons it could have been any of those. We waited for a ransom demand, but it never came. Then we had to assume this was more personal than a simple kidnap-­and-­ransom-­demand like the other cases. We could not ignore the warning we had been given many years before. When Luiz died of his injuries two months later, it became a murder case, too.”

“I'm so sorry.”

“For years, the Himmelreichs had let us be, though one of their companies had expanded into the vacation business, mainly cheap hotels. They tried to undercut us, but they had little understanding of our market. Unfortunately, by then, they were players in the trade organisations who made the rules. Government officials, the planning and tax authorities . . . they could all be persuaded to support the Himmelreichs' business ventures. There was a growing grey area of officialdom controlled by money from organised crime. The pressures on us grew. When we resisted, they proved ruthless.”

“You think it was them?”

“We know it was. It was dressed up as part of the timeshare chicanery of the 1980s and early 1990s, but the abduction of Carolina's son was an act of revenge.”

“For not joining the Lisbon Pact?” I couldn't keep the incredulity out of my tone.

“No, a dish served much colder than that. This was for the Himmelreichs' cousin, Axel Emberlin.” Eduardo watched me carefully. “Perhaps the name was used on your friend's birth certificate as a nasty little reminder, if the paperwork was ever traced, that they knew Karl Walde shot Emberlin in Faro. But it is also proof of the connection. You will note the perpetrators have no fear of what might happen if it is understood. They are too well protected.”

It seemed incredible that the story could be true. Maybe part of me hadn't been expecting that.

“My family paid a terrible price. Carolina suffered terribly after the loss of both her child and her husband. She could no longer work. All she could do was look for Rafael.”

Rafael. A third name. If he was this boy, Nathan was changing yet again into a different person.

“But the police investigation drew a blank. The authorities, the police, the social workers, they asked the same questions again and again. We could give no different answers. There were no answers. The borders into Spain were not closed quickly enough to check those leaving the country. We knew the perpetrators could have slipped away leaving no trace.”

“Did they find out who killed Carolina's husband?”

“No. The police made a few useless arrests, but it was all for show. They got nowhere. The perpetrators had powerful allies.”

I wondered whether the same would be true for the Rylands case.

“We were at a dead end,” he said.

The word hung awkwardly, but he shrugged. That was what it was. “Thoughts of our boy were with us all the hours in the day and night. Not to know whether he was alive or dead, or how he suffered—­it was with us every minute of every day. But there was never an answer.”

“And Carolina, now?” I hardly dared ask. “Is she—­?”

“She was brave as a lioness. With no proof to the contrary, you must believe that your child might still be alive, that one day they might be found. For months, she kept her dignity while we did whatever we could. We hired private detectives. We befriended the police detectives. We pulled strings, any connections we had. But nothing worked. Then came the suicide attempts.”

I could hardly bear to hear it. None of us had proof that this had anything at all to do with Nathan and his improbable story, I told myself. Yet all my instincts were pointing in one direction and it was clear that Eduardo's were, too. Or was that desperation? A stab of anxiety hit me. What if Nathan had been making it all up? Was I an idiot for believing him, and worse, had I inflicted more pain on the Walde family with a cock-­and-­bull story? I almost didn't want to hear any more.