The Eldorado Network (12 page)

It felt good. Even without money, it felt good. Madrid was having a sparkling, spanking day, and after all that time beneath a twelve-foot ceiling Luis saw the streets as grand and glittering canyons. The traffic whizzed and dodged, bold and cavalier, and the people took it all for granted, like the sublime creatures they clearly were. By the time he had walked to the railway station this sudden intoxication was beginning to wear off, but he still felt like a peasant, gawking at the big city, and he made an effort to look more confident and urban.

His picture was not on the police posters in the railway station because there were no police posters in the railway station. So that was good.

A newspaper headline caught his eye: Germany had attacked Crete. He picked up a copy and glanced at the opening paragraph while his hand felt in his pocket and found (of course) nothing, not even a button; zero, emptiness. He put the paper back and turned away while the owner of the stall came over, straightened the pile of papers and squinted at him. Luis frowned and checked his watch against the station clock. Two minutes slow. He grunted briskly. Not good enough. He must have money!

For the rest of the morning he walked around the centre of Madrid. The layout was familiar but the impact was startling: for the first time he saw how damned rich the city was. The Prado had always been just a big art gallery; now he climbed its broad exterior staircase and stroked one of the massive pink columns propping up the noble facade, and he worked out the bill for this whole colossal effort. A fortune!

This one column alone must have cost ten thousand pesetas. And after that they had to buy all the pictures on the walls inside. Two fortunes, right here in one building! But there were riches everywhere you looked. Next to the Prado was the Neptune Fountain, with a couple of rather slap-happy seahorses galumphing boisterously in the huge pool. and the shaggy old man waving a generous arm towards the Palace Hotel, worth a few million as it stood, and it seemed to be doing good business, too. The whole of Madrid seemed to be doing good business. Most of the damage from the Civil War had been removed or repaired, and Luis saw uniforms everywhere. He stood on the corner of the Calle de Alcala where it joined the Gran Via, and marvelled that so many countries could afford to send so many military representatives to Spain, and in such big cars, too. The Banco de Espana had its headquarters on the corner, sturdy and splendid, and Luis felt pleased to see that his financiers were still prospering. The whole of the Gran Via seemed to be awash with prosperity: he went along in a happy tide of well-dressed shoppers, past stores which were brilliant with goods, and eventually reached the Plaza Espana, a great and tranquil plain of trees and flowers. In the middle stood the Cervantes Monument. Luis strolled over and stared. Posterity had done very well by Cervantes, he thought, but the publishers must be doing even better out of him. There was money in books, if only you could come up with the right book . . .

Around the corner, then, to the Sabatini Gardens and good God in heaven above, the Royal Palace! What a size! The damn place stretched for ever. Everything was squared-off and balanced, balconies and windows and pilasters multiplying themselves with great discipline, but it was all so bloody big\ And then Luis realised that he was looking at the end of the Palace. To see the front  --  the entire front  --  he had to walk across to the far side of the Plaza de Oriente. The view dazed him: how could there be enough money in the world to put up a building like that? How could he have driven a taxi around Madrid and not seen all these fantastic riches? All this phenomenal wealth?

A combination of fresh air, sunshine, hunger and architectural magnificence began to work on his brain. He walked through the backstreets to the most spectacular square in Madrid, the Plaza Mayor, and stood in its centre, like a drunk in a distillery. The terraced houses rose five storeys high on all four sides, with a colonnaded piazza running around the base. He was in a stadium of balconies far bigger than any bullring, and as vivid as a theatre. If I owned one-tenth of this, Luis thought, one-hundredth even . . .

He moved on, restless with envy, and found himself in the Puerta del Sol, the Times Square of Madrid. The pulse of the crowds was stronger here, everyone heading for lunch. Only Luis, it seemed, had nowhere to go. He looked for and found the zero-kilometre landmark, the spot representing the nominal centre of Spain, starting-point for all the radial roads. 'This is where it all begins, then,' he said. He looked for, and found, the statue of the symbol of Madrid: the bear and the madrono tree. The beast was standing on its hind legs and eating the fruit. Luis patted a massive bronze paw. 'You have the right idea, friend,' he murmured. 'There is money to be made here. I shall make a lot of it. You want to know how? I shall spy for the British.'

'Now, exactly what sort of agency do you represent, Senor Cabrillo?" asked the British Embassy's assistant commercial attache, unscrewing the cap from his fountain pen.

'Military intelligence,' said Luis.

The cap went back on the fountain pen. 'Wrong department,' the man said.

'Yes, I know,' Luis told him. 'You see, I did not trust the man who met me when I arrived here. He looked . . .' Luis wobbled his hands and tried to think of the English word. 'What is . . .?' He fluttered his fingers. 'Not quite criminal, but . . .'

'Shifty?' suggested the assistant commercial attache, getting to his feet.

'Yes, shifty! You have noticed it too.'

'I must remember to tell him. That was Williams, our head of security.'

Luis smiled. 'He has a sense of humour, then.'

'Absolutely none. Stiff as a plank. Wait here, please.'

Fifteen minutes later a woman looked into the room and offered Luis a cup of tea. He accepted.

After another ten minutes a tall, thin man came in and introduced himself as Cameron. He wore a doublebreasted blue blazer and very dark grey trousers. 'Now, Mr Cabrillo,' he said, 'I understand you have some secret knowledge of the German war machine which you wish to share with us.'

'No,' said Luis.

Cameron stiffened, and gave him a hard look. 'That is not the impression you gave my colleague.'

'He makes his impressions, Mr Cameron, and I make mine. I did not completely trust him. He looked . . .shifty.'

Cameron grunted. 'Like Williams, you mean?'

'More or less, yes.'

'You will tell me, won't you, if I start looking shifty?'

'Yes. At once.'

'You're very kind. If you have no military information to share, why come to the British Embassy?'

'I wish to spy for Britain,' Luis declared. 'In Germany, preferably. Or in Italy, if you wish.'

'The grub's better in Italy,' said Cameron thoughtfully. 'There's probably more business to be had in Germany, but I'd pick Italy for the food, and of course for the climate . . . Not that I know the first thing about it.' He got up. 'Not my department, thank God. Wait here, would you?'

Luis waited for another half-hour, during which a different woman brought him another cup of tea.

The next man to arrive was a friendly squadron-leader in the RAF, called Blake. He shook hands warmly and smiled jovially, and Luis felt greatly encouraged. At last he was getting somewhere.

'Right! Now, let's find out something about you. I take it you're . . . Spanish?'

'Yes.'

Blake wrote that down. 'And I'm told you're offering us your services as a sort of a ... That is to say, you'd be involved in ... well, in a sort of intelligence capacity. So to speak. Mmm?'

'I wish to spy for the British,' said Luis. There had been enough confusion already.

'Of course,' beamed Blake. Jolly good.' He wrote that down. 'Now, I hope you won't be offended, old chap, if I ask you why?'

Luis frowned. He had not expected that question. How or when, yes; but not why. This was probably not the time to raise the subject of money. He moved his cup and saucer an inch to the right, crossed his legs, tugged the lobe of his left ear.

'Porque? Blake added, helpfully.

'It is a matter of style,' Luis told him. 'I very much admire style, and from what I have seen, British style is second to none.'

'Style?' Blake looked surprised, but he made a note.

'I do not mean taste,' Luis said. 'Taste is not style.'

'Isn't it?' Blake chewed his pen. 'No, I suppose it isn't.'

'On the other hand, style is never in bad taste.'

'No, I mean I couldn't agree more, old boy. Not that I know much about that sort of thing, but it's always good to hear someone say something nice about the old country . . . Really, though, what I meant was: why come to us instead of to the Germans?'

'As I have said  --  '

'Yes, I know, style and all that; but let's face it, your government is much chummier with them than it is with us, isn't it?'

'I do not support the government,' Luis said. 'As we say in Spanish: I shit on fascism.'

'Oh,' Blake thought for a moment, wrote something, crossed it out, wrote something else. 'Sounds as if you might have been on the other side in the recent Civil War,' he remarked.

'I shit on Communism too,' Luis said.

'Ah. Well, that seems to take care of the political situation, then.' Blake grinned cheerily, and Luis's confidence in him increased yet again. Clearly this was a man who understood men, who saw facts clearly and made decisions quickly. It would be a pleasure as well as a profit to work for the British.

'In any case, it would be pointless for me to go to the Germans,' Luis said. 'They are winning, they don't need spies. Your country, however, is not winning, and so you need all the help you can get.'

'That's very interesting,' Blake said thoughtfully. 'I've never heard it put quite like that before.'

Blake asked him about his background, and smiled sympathetically when Luis revealed that he had no previous experience in espionage, although his work for the newspaper correspondents could be described as a sort of apprenticeship. 'That does not worry me,' Luis said. 'It means I have nothing in my past to hide, so I cannot be exposed by anybody. My inexperience will be a great advantage, in fact.'

Blake snapped his fingers in admiration. 'I must remember to tell that to the Air Ministry,' he said, and scribbled a final note. 'Perhaps they'll make me a wing commander. Look, thanks awfully for being so helpful.' He shook hands again and clapped Luis on the shoulder. 'You don't mind stooging about here for a sec? I'll get you a spot of tea.' He winked reassuringly, and stepped bouncily out of the room, whacking his notebook against his thigh as he went.

Intellect, competence and decisiveness, Luis thought. Ability and clarity. Above all, style. What an admirable people the British were. Admirably dependable too: the tea arrived almost at once.

On the floor above, a greyhaired naval commander named Meredith looked out at the Calle Fernando el Santo, listened to Blake's report, and wrinkled his nose.

'What it boils down to, Freddy, is he's a dago spy. What do we want with a dago spy?'

'No idea, sir. I've only been here a week, remember, so it's all Greek to me.'

'All right, listen. Point one: London's not keen on local recruiting. Point two: if we encourage him he'll want money and we haven't a budget. Point three: in any case we don't need a dago spy, we need a victory. Greece has gone down the drain, Crete's going fast, North Africa's bloody dodgy, and look at the havoc the U-boats are doing to our convoys! Have you any idea how much tonnage those bastards sank last month, Freddy?'

Blake creased his brow. 'Quite a lot, sir?'

'A hell of a sight more than we can replace,' Meredith said bitterly. 'And no amount of dago spies is going to alter that awful fact.'

'Tell you what, sir,' Blake suggested. I'll stagger down and tell him to buzz off, shall I?'

Meredith leaned forward and squinted into the sunlit street. 'There go those frightful Hungarians,' he grunted. 'Thank God they're not on our side.'

'No style, sir?' Blake asked.

Meredith turned away from the window and heaved a sigh. 'He's got a bloody nerve, hasn't he? Wandering in here without an appointment and . . . Are you sure he hasn't got any connections or . . .or influence? What university did he go to?'

'None, I think,' Blake said, 'but I'll find out.'

Meredith followed him downstairs. When Blake opened the door, Meredith peered through the crack. He saw Luis stand up and smile.

'I say: you didn't go to a university, did you, old boy?' Blake asked amiably, shaking his head: and Luis confirmed this. Blake smiled his gratitude and shut the door.

'How old is he, for God's sake?' Meredith asked.

'Midi-twenties, I'd say, sir. A handsome lad, though.'

Meredith made a face. 'He doesn't look like my idea of a spy. Not a bit like.'

'Sometimes that's all to the good, sir. We don't want our spies to look like spies, do we?'

'He's had no experience, he doesn't know anyone, and he hasn't been to a decent university. Not even an indecent one. The fellow must think we're absolutely desperate. Damn cheek. See him off, Freddy.' Meredith tramped upstairs.

Blake opened the door and gave Luis a friendly grin. 'Sorry, old chap,' he said. 'None today, I'm afraid.'

On his way out of the embassy, the shock and the many cups of tea caught up with Luis. 'May I use your bathroom?' he asked.

'Be my guest,' Blake said. He pointed to a door.

Luis went inside and discovered that the room was indeed a bathroom: it contained a bath and a washbasin. He was too weak to argue. He pissed down the side of the bath to minimise the noise, ran the taps for a moment, and walked out into the glaring heat of the street, trembling with relief and chagrin.

At right angles to the Calle Fernando el Santo was the Calle de Fortuny. The German Embassy occupied number eight. Luis Cabrillo was ringing its doorbell less than a minute after leaving the other place.

The British Embassy had been like a gentlemen's club on a quiet weekend: spacious, quiet, with an occasional glimpse of a uniformed porter taking something to somebody at no great pace. By contrast the German Embassy bustled like a railway station.