The Eldorado Network (15 page)

'How awful,' Luis said. 'There doesn't seem much I can do about it.'

'Close your eyes and think of Germany,' Otto advised.

'Anyway, try not to get involved,' Christian told him. 'Don't get engaged, and certainly don't get married. You know where to buy contraceptive sheaths in England?'

'Drugstores?' Luis suggested.

'Hairdressers. Peculiar people, the English. Perhaps they wear them on their heads in wet weather. And it's not drugstores in England, it's chemists' shops.'

'Sorry.'

'You'll be more than sorry if you make that kind of mistake . . . What do you want us to do with your money?'

'Pay it,' Luis said, surprised.

'Yes, but where? You'll never spend it all in England. If you're just going to bring it out again, you might as well have it put somewhere handy in the first place.'

'Switzerland,' Otto proposed. 'Central, and safe. Or Sweden, or Portugal, or the United States . . . We can open an account in your name and have the statements sent to any address you specify.' They discussed Luis's financial arrangements in some detail, including which currency he should be paid in; how he might consider investing his funds; his tax status; the advantages and disadvantages of engaging an accountant; what sort of trade or profession to assume; and the possibility of turning oneself into a limited company based in, say, the Bahamas. Luis found it enormously stimulating and gratifying. 'I don't want you worrying about money,' Colonel Christian told him. 'It's in my interests to keep your mind clear so that you can concentrate on your job. Right?'

'Right. And you agreed to pay me a thousand pesetas today.'

Christian whacked Otto on the head with the rolled-up map. 'Fathead!' he cried. Otto pretended to be stunned, and crossed his eyes. 'Pay Mr Cabrillo two thousand pesetas instantly, or I shall have your arms torn off by wild horses.'

Otto emptied his wallet. 'I have only fifteen hundred pesetas,' he said. He gave the notes to Luis.

'In that case only one arm shall be torn off,' Christian ruled.

'The Embassy has no wild horses,' Otto said.

'Then find some tame horses, and enrage the beasts!' Christian shouted, waving his arms. He took Luis by the elbow and steered him out of the room. 'I am surrounded by fatheads,' he murmured loudly.

They walked downstairs, across a courtyard which had a fountain and some shade trees, and into a small ground-floor room. There was a chair, a table, some magazines, a door to the next room, and a view of the street through a barred and dusty window.

'Make yourself comfortable,' Christian said. He went out and closed the door behind him.

That was 4.25. By five o'clock Luis was bored and becoming slightly irritated.

At first he had been too exhilarated to sit down, and too excited to look at the magazines. He counted and recounted the money, straightening the dog-eared corners and correcting any notes which were upside-down or back-to-front. Fifteen hundred pesetas! And it might so easily have been two thousand! By God, he thought, there is booty to be got out of this war if you have the nerve to go in and claim it. . . The wad of paper made a fat and reassuring bulge in his hip pocket.

He strolled up and down the room and tried to work out what had happened during the afternoon. Obviously he had been put through a series of tests, and only when he passed those tests had he been accepted into the Abwehr. The money had been a symbol of admission; the money, and the fact that Colonel Christian had shown him so much secret information. That much was clear.

And Colonel Christian: what a character! Who said the Germans had no sense of humour? 'I am surrounded by fatheads!' Luis murmured happily.

All right, what about fat Franz and the practical joke in the steel room? Luis unbuttoned his shirt. There was a small round mark, not serious enough to be called a bruise, an inch above his breastbone. Franz's pistol fired bullets which bounced off people. How chic! How sophisticated! Civilised warfare at last! Or was it? Would he have felt anything if it had been a real bullet? The serious suffering came before Franz pulled the trigger. Expectation was a worse death than perforation. Presumably that episode was just a test, too. Supposing Luis had been a British spy, would he have stayed silent and let Franz fire? No, probably not. In fact definitely not. Luis knew it, conceded it: he would have confessed. It was the blatant absurdity of Franz's action that had forced him to tighten his grip on the truth and refuse to cheat. If Franz was going to be a mad killer then Luis had to die a sane victim: that was the simple logic of the nightmare.

If he had confessed, what would they have done? Probably shot him with a real bullet, immediately. And used a real silencer, too. Luis remembered that terrible little bang, the last sound he was going to hear on earth. From a silenced gun. He should have known better. But during those final seconds of horror, the brain had quit and the senses were running riot. One little bang had been enough to pop his over-inflated consciousness; one tiny prod in the chest flattened him. It was death by imagination.

And all that other stuff, in Christian's office? Bleak analyses of the tedium of spying, and of the danger; all leading to an effort to persuade him to accept the security and prestige of a commission in the German army? Just tests. Tests of his determination and self-confidence and driving-power. Naturally they had wanted to know what sort of a man he was, whether or not he was capable of operating alone and under great pressure. Well, now they knew. Luis took out his money again, spread the notes like a deck of cards, and fanned himself. Beautiful winnings! He was eager to start work and make more.

The chair was hard, and the Franco-censored magazines were dull.

The door to the next room was locked.

The view from the dusty window was unexciting. The street was empty except for a cat which sat on a wall and looked at Luis, weighing up his prospects.

After a while it yawned and went away. Now the street was completely vacant.

Luis began to get impatient. Colonel Christian had given no reason for leaving him here, so Luis had assumed it would be for just a few minutes. Already it was half an hour. What the hell did they think they were playing at?

He gave Christian two minutes to return. Otherwise he was going to look for him.

Christian ignored the ultimatum. 'Very well,' Luis said aloud, 'you leave me no choice.' He strode to the door, and it too was locked. 'Ohoh,' he added more softly. 'You really do leave me no choice.'

For a while he paced the room trying to decide whether or not he was justified in feeling so annoyed; and failing. So he sat on the hard chair and flicked through the dull magazines. They were stifling. Stupefying. The table had a drawer. He tugged it open, and a key rattled forward.

'Well, now,' Luis said. He tried the key in the door to the corridor and it did not work. He tried it in the door to the other room and it worked so easily that the door seemed to swing open at his touch.

The room was larger, with two windows (unbarred) and a door (closed). It was more comfortably furnished, but not by much: the main difference was a big settee. On it, a man slept.

Luis tiptoed over and took a good look at him. He was under thirty, cleanshaven, with fair, curly hair and a pleasantly freckled face, boyish now in the ease of sleep. He was wearing a grey polo-neck sweater with buff twill trousers, and he was barefoot.

A smear of mud had dried across his forehead. He was sleeping heavily, with one arm trapped beneath his legs and the other flopping loose.

Luis moved to the door. It was locked. He tried the key but it wouldn't work this lock. Worse, it got stuck, and he had to use his strength to turn it back. The door rattled noisily, and the sleeper awoke. He thrust himself upright, stiff and staring, like a knock-down fairground target swung back into action. 'Hide the sell' he said in a cracked and furious whisper. All his boyish ease had vanished; he looked thoroughly frightened.

'I'm sorry,' Luis said. 'I'm afraid I disturbed you.' They spoke in English.

The man stared at him, not breathing, grasping the edge of the settee so tightly that Luis could see the raised veins and sinews on the backs of his hands. Then he slowly relaxed, and sucked in a long, shivering lungful of air. 'Oh crikey,' he said, and put his head in his hands. 'It's not Liverpool, is it?'

'You mean this place?' The man nodded. 'This is Madrid,' Luis said.

'I don't care, as long as it's not Liverpool,' the man mumbled. He looked up, his hands still covering half his face. 'I remember now: I got away. Yes . . . Now I remember. My God.' Unexpectedly, he chuckled. 'So did you, eh? Bloody good show ...'

'I don't know about that,' Luis said. 'Have you the key to this door?'

The eyes narrowed, the voice grated. 'Who the hell are you? How did you get in here? What d'you want?'

'I just want to get out.'

'Why? What's your bloody game?' He was quivering with angry suspicion.

'It's nothing to do with you, I assure you.' Luis attempted a gentle, comforting smile. 'I'm looking for Colonel Christian, that's all.'

The name had a curious effect. The man seemed to withdraw, physically and emotionally. He shifted to the far end of the settee and sat with his feet up, hugging his knees. His face was a blank and his eyes were half-closed. He spoke in a bitter whisper. 'You'd better find him before I do, chummy,' he said, 'because I'm going to kill that bastard.' His head slowly dropped. The tangle of fair curls quivered in an occasional tremor; otherwise he might have been sleeping. Perhaps he was sleeping.

Luis wandered across the room. There were many questions he would have liked to ask, but not at the price of disturbing this man, who seemed disturbed enough already. On the other hand, Luis himself was a lot less happy than he had been half-an-hour ago. It was pretty obvious where this fellow had been, and apparently he hadn't enjoyed it very much. Christian didn't seem to have been a lot of help, either.

A newspaper lay on the floor beside the settee. Luis picked it up. Yesterday's edition of The Times, of London, very crumpled and stained. Someone had ringed an item in the personal column: PONGO: Never say die. See you at the theatre. Rhino. Luis looked from the newspaper to the silent figure on the settee. A bottle was poking out of a coat pocket; he leaned forward and recognised the label: Johnny Walker. Not a lot left, either.

Time passed. Luis fetched the chair from the other room and tried to keep it from squeaking. The cat walked up the street and yawned at him again. If he held his breath he could just hear, far away, the faintest possible tapping of a typewriter. The old nervous trembling was beginning to come back under his heart.

He glanced across the room and found the barefoot man awake again and watching him. 'Are you, by any chance, Pongo?' Luis inquired. 'Or perhaps Rhino? I only ask because I'm going to England soon, and I'd be grateful for any advice.'

No response.

'My guess is you left in rather a hurry,' Luis said.

More silence.

'Well, I suppose you know best,' Luis said.

That did the trick. The barefoot man stood up, and slowly and methodically searched the room. He found nothing, and returned to the settee, which he prodded cautiously all over. Finally he tipped it onto its back and examined its underside. One corner of the hessian covering had come loose. He seized a handful and ripped more of it away. Luis came closer and watched with interest as he thrust an arm deep into the guts of the settee and dragged out a small microphone on the end of a length of wire. He tossed it to Luis and righted the settee with a contemptuous crash.

'My goodness,' Luis said; but the barefoot man put his finger to his lips. He opened a window and looked out, feeling around the frame and under the sill. Then he beckoned Luis over and together they leaned out.

'There's another mike planted "somewhere," he said softly. 'Yes, I'm Pongo. Or I was until last night. God knows where they find these idiotic codenames. I suppose it's someone's idea of a joke. Their whole bloody operation is a joke.'

'You mentioned Liverpool,' Luis said. They were leaning out, their heads close together, looking down into the basement area. 'Were you in Liverpool?'

'Liverpool, Southampton, Sheffield, Bristol, Glasgow, you name it they sent me there, dozens of times. Always a mad rush of course. Extreme urgency. Top priority. Take the first train but don't travel first class, we can't afford it, go second class. Christ, the number of hours I've spent flattening my arse in grubby British second-class compartments, you wouldn't believe.'

'But I thought money was no problem.' Luis said. Pongo laughed. 'Well, that was the impression I got, anyway,' Luis added.

'You must be easily impressed. They're tight and they're cheap but you don't discover that until you're over there. I was starving at one point. Can you believe that? Starving.

They left me flat broke for weeks on end.'

Luis thought, while Pongo spat his disgust at the battered dustbins below, and missed. 'But. . . how did you survive?'

'Took a job. Had to! Drove a taxi around London and nearly caught my death of cold . . . Every night I signalled Christian: send money. Fat lot he cared. Bastard.'

'I used to drive a taxi, once,' Luis said. 'Here.'

'Take my tip, friend. Go back to it. You'll live longer and die richer.'

'Didn't you get sent any money at ail?' Luis asked.

Pongo looked up at the sky. Its pure oceanic blue was beginning to fade with the passing of day. Fifty yards to their right, the traffic on Fortuny flicked past this empty backstreet. 'They sent me money,' Pongo said. 'They sent me a hundred guineas, in a leather bag. Great fat clinking golden guineas'. . .' He covered his face and rubbed his eyes, and came up blinking at the awful memory.

'Not sovereigns?' Luis said.

'Guineas. As inconspicuous as a-three-dollar bill. A bag full of death warrants.'

'It does sound rather . . . ill-advised,' Luis agreed.

Pongo gave him a sharp glance, incredulity touched with anger; hunched his shoulders; looked away. There was a pause.