Artillery of Lies (44 page)

“No.” She had a suicidal urge to tell him everything and she quashed it fast. But it reminded her of the hotel porter. “Yes. Maybe. Something I don't understand. What does this mean?” She reached across the table and turned back the left lapel of his jacket. At once his hand came up and swept the lapel flat again.

“You'd be well advised not to do that in a place like this,” he said. “It could be misinterpreted.”

“As what?”

Father Desmond leaned forward. “There are policemen everywhere in Spain,” he said softly. “Secret police, plain-clothes police. It's generally believed that they wear a little badge under their left lapel, I don't know if that's true, but when someone turns back his lapel and looks toward a man, it means that fellow's a secret policeman, so don't trust him.”

“Ah,” Julie said. “That explains a lot.” It explained, for a start, why nobody had been pleased to see Gomez, and why Gomez had steered her away from the Wellington. It also meant that Gomez was probably working with the
Abwehr,
in which case the
Abwehr
would know by now that she was in Santander looking for Luis. She smiled at Father Desmond, trying not to look troubled. She felt worse than troubled. She felt beaten.

They went Dutch on the bill. Outside, the traffic was much thinner: it was past ten, and Santander was beginning to go home. “You'll need a taxi to get to the Wellington,” Father Desmond said. She nodded. “I see one across the street,” he said, and took her to it. A truck came to a halt for their benefit and he waved to the driver. “Nobody knocks down a priest in this part of Spain,” he told her. “It's one of the few perquisites of the job.” They shook hands.

“Bless you,” she said.

“Hey, hey! You'll put me out of business.” He laughed and walked away. She got into the taxi. The driver was Antonio Gomez.

For a while neither of them spoke; they just sat and looked at each other through the rearview mirror. Gomez was relaxed and
expressionless, with eyes like small black pebbles. “You're following me around, you bum,” she said. It sounded weak. She felt weak.

“Perhaps,” he said.

“Don't be coy with me. You're a cop, you work for the secret police.”

He examined that statement carefully. “Perhaps,” he said.

“Yeah, you're right. Who cares?” She stretched her legs and rested her head. “You certainly don't work for the Better Business Bureau. Why d'you take me to that dump of dumps, instead of the Wellington Hotel?”

“You did not ask—”

“Yes I did. Best hotel, I said.”

“Best, yes. Not most expensive.”

“You ever
stayed
in the Salamanca? It's bug heaven.”

“Good value for money.”

“Who runs it? Your brother-in-law?”

“Perhaps.”

“Tell him to feed the spiders more often. They've begun to eat the rats.”

He reviewed that suggestion. “No, I think not,” he said.

“OK, let's quit horsing around. Is Señor Cabrillo at the Wellington?”

“Perhaps.”

“Let's go and see.”

Gomez drove as far as the nearest phone box, stopped, got out, made a call. When he came back, she said: “Did you get your orders?”

“Perhaps.”

“Take my advice, never get married,” Julie said. “She'd strangle you in your sleep before the honeymoon was over.”

He drove on. The streets became broader and soon the car was speeding past the sea on their left. Moonlight raced along the curved back of the surf as it angled toward the shore. Sometimes Julie heard the thump of a wave and smelt the tang of the Atlantic: brine laced with iodine. Very bracing. She didn't need to be braced. Her nervous system was doing a fine job all on its own. It was telling her that everything was wrong. She was trapped in this taxi. Gomez was in command and Gomez was unlikely to do what she wanted.
You loused it up,
she told herself, and got the angry reply:
So tell me what I should have done instead.
Stony silence.

The sea curved away and was hidden by trees. The road made so many turns that she gave up trying to remember the route.
Suddenly and surprisingly, the sea glittered to the right. Tall white walls reflected the headlights and the taxi stopped at a pair of high wrought-iron gates, dense with metal decoration. A man came out and looked at Gomez, and went back and leaned on one half of the gates. It trundled open on rollers.

“This isn't the Wellington,” Julie said. It sounded foolish.

“Perhaps,” Gomez said. He drove in.

The moon had not yet risen when Luis was taken to the villa. The first thing that surprised him when Brigadier Christian came to fetch him was that Christian had a gun. It was perfectly obvious: he was wearing a lightweight linen jacket and the butt of the pistol was plain to see when he put his hands in his pockets and the jacket fell open. “Goodness,” Luis said. “Are we in danger?”

“I'm not,” Christian said. “You might be.” And that was all he said. They drove to the villa without speaking. Luis did not enjoy the sight of the gates, or the walls. Too big, too serious. The car crunched along a gravel drive that looked as if it got raked smooth after every use and it drove into a garage big enough to play basketball in. Luis got out and met his second surprise. A man with fingers like a double-bass player searched him for weapons. Luis had been searched once or twice during the Civil War, when sentries at checkpoints patted him to see if he rattled. This man tested every part of his body except his head and his feet, and he probed the sensitive areas with professional vigor. “Don't worry, they're all there,” Luis said. “I counted them only this morning.” The man ignored him.

Christian led him through the villa. It was built on several levels: they went down and then up, and up again, until they reached a large semi-circular room whose straight side opened on to a dark terrace that overlooked the sea. Here was the third and final surprise. The room was empty of furniture except for a high stool, standing in the center. The stool was spotlit. The effect was theatrical.

Christian snapped his fingers and pointed to the stool. He went on to the terrace and was lost in the darkness. Luis felt irritated. He resented being ordered about like this. He picked up the stool and flung it into the fireplace. Then he sat on the floor, under the spotlights, crosslegged, and yawned.

For three minutes nothing happened. He yawned again. The
spotlights were pleasantly warm. Somewhere far away a gull made its high, querulous call. The terrace must overlook the sea.

“Tell us about Garlic,” said a voice from the terrace, not Christian's.

“No,” Luis said, flatly but politely.

“Why not?”

“Because you don't need to know.” He thought hard:
Why should they be interested in Garlic? They like Garlic. They gave him a bonus.
“Simple security,” he said.

“Well, let me tell you something about Garlic. Garlic is a liar and a traitor.”

“Uh-huh.” Luis tried to locate the voice, but the terrace was too black; he could make out nothing. “What has he lied about and whom has he betrayed?” He was quite proud of that
whom.

“We have identified six major reports from Garlic which are contradicted by other intelligence sources—directly and completely contradicted.”

“Major reports,” Luis said. “Well, Garlic has certainly produced plenty of those. Convoys, troop movements, aircraft developments …”

“Last September.” That was Christian. “Garlic sent some convoy sailing dates, out of the Clyde. But he wasn't even in Glasgow, was he?”

Luis braced his stomach muscles. “Wasn't he?”

“The medical school got sent to Newcastle while three unexploded bombs were dug out of their building. Six weeks, that took. The students were away for six weeks.”

“Not Garlic” Stout denial, always the best defense. “Not Garlic. Garlic stayed.”

“Really?” The first voice again. “Why?”

“Mumps. He got mumps.” There was suppressed laughter. “I'm glad you find it amusing,” he said stiffly. “I can assure you that Garlic didn't. Even so, it didn't stop him working for us.”

“Was he not confined to bed?”

“There is such a thing as the telephone. And he had visitors. Garlic has a wide circle of friends.”

“But he still got the sailing dates all wrong. And the convoy numbers.”

“No, he got them right. Unfortunately … what with the strain of the work and the effects of his fever … Garlic made a simple error. He confused the dates with the numbers. He said Convoy 12 would
sail on the twenty-first, instead of Convoy 21 sailing on the twelfth.” Luis shrugged. “An agent must depend on his memory.” Luis gripped his ankles to stop his hands trembling.

“You should have reported the error,” Christian said.

“I did. Madrid didn't acknowledge.” Luis was afraid his poker-face might crack, so he looked into one of the spotlights. Now he could squint and grimace freely. “That happens quite often,” he said.

“And then Garlic went off to the Scottish Highlands,” the first voice said, “presumably to convalesce.”

“Is that what he said? I don't remember.”

“He said he saw a lot of Commando training.”

“Yes, that sounds familiar.”

“According to Haystack,” Christian said, “no foreigner is permitted to travel more than thirty miles outside his place of residence without an official pass.”

“Well?” Luis raised his eyebrows and furrowed his brow like a schoolmaster trying to winkle a response from a dull class. He wrapped his arms around his legs and rested his chin on his knees and waited.
Bloody Haystack,
he thought,
that was a damn-fool thing for Haystack to say. I'll kill the bastard.

“Well?” the first voice said.

“You surprise me,” Luis said, and immediately surprised himself by inventing a good excuse. “Do you really expect Garlic to be frightened by that sort of regulation? He ignored it, of course. He took the risk and he came back with the intelligence.” That silenced them. “Garlic is a brave man,” Luis said. “You know, sometimes I think you have forgotten what courage it takes to be a good agent.” He felt himself developing an indignant pride, and shut up before he spoiled it.

Christian said, “That's not all we found—”

“But it's enough, I think,” the first voice said. “It's all academic anyway. Was Garlic fit and well when you left?”

“Yes.”

“Still reporting regularly and fruitfully?”

“Yes.”

“As brave and resourceful as ever, in fact?”

Luis began to feel like a rabbit dazzled by headlights: there was no way to turn. “Yes,” he said.

“He certainly deserves a medal for resourcefulness,” the voice said evenly, “because we had him shot dead a couple of weeks ago.”

*

The same man who had searched Luis now searched Julie, using the same stiff and steely fingers. “Too late,” she told him. “I swallowed the stolen pearls an hour ago.” But a tiny stammer almost sabotaged the word “pearls.” The man ignored what she said and pointed to an open door.

They walked along a silent corridor, across a small courtyard with a softly bubbling fountain, and into a long room that held little more than a refectory table. There was no sound apart from their footsteps. He showed her into another, smaller room and shut the door behind him as he went out. Shut it and locked it. The lock made a soft click, no louder than a broken neck. “Hey!” she shouted. “What's going on? Where's Cabrillo? Gomez brought me here to meet Cabrillo!”

The walls soaked up her voice and gave back nothing.

“That's a dumb thing to say, dummy,” she said. “You've handled this all wrong and now you're up the creek.” The outlook was fairly grim. What it all came down to was she had been dumb enough to take on the
Abwehr
singlehanded and she had lost. In fact when she thought of the way she had sought out defeat by trusting Gomez, disgust and despair combined to drain her of strength. She went and sat on the floor, in a corner, and waited for the world to do its worst to her.

After a while she saw herself as if from the middle of the room, and she knew what she looked like: Stephanie Schmidt. One of nature's failures. Soggy with self-pity. The image forced her to her feet.
What though the field be lost? All is not lost.
John Milton, a line from something she'd read at school. It had stuck in her memory, waiting for an emergency to drag it out. Well, this was an emergency and a half. All was not lost; there was still a slim chance she could find Luis and tell him Garlic was dead. Two seconds: that was all she needed. Get out, find Luis, tell him. Now she had a plan, or at least a purpose. Now she felt better.

The room was a bedroom. At least there was a single bed, maybe more of a couch with a yellow throw over it. She peeled back the throw and found sheets and a pillow. Might be useful. What else? No windows. Light hanging from the ceiling. Couple of upright chairs; small chest of drawers, all empty; mirror fixed to the wall; fireplace, big but empty. Strip of carpet. Wash-basin. And
a piece of cord that looped around a brass shackle fixed to the wall and stretched up to the ceiling. She undid the cord from the shackle and experimented, tugging. High overhead a roller blind speedily rolled itself up and revealed the night.

Skylight.

Hope blossomed and withered. The skylight offered a possible way out except that it was impossible because it was too high, at least eleven or twelve feet above the floor.

Julie walked around the room, studying the skylight from every angle. It was always out of reach. She put one of the chairs on the chest and climbed on to the chair. Shaky and short. Far short.

Forget it. Try the fireplace.

It was one of your typical, traditional Spanish fireplaces, wide enough at the base to roast a young American but tapering fast. She crouched, eased her head and shoulders under the granite mantel and cautiously stood upright. The air smelled thick and flavored with sulfur. She looked up. Black as a charcoal-burner's hat. She felt upward with both hands. The chimney was wider than she was. A dusty dribble of soot tumbled on to her face.