The Eldorado Network (30 page)

tricks with a coin: tossing it and catching it on the back of his hand. Another minute passed. Luis began to get bored, and he entertained himself with thoughts of Julie Conroy,

her satisfying face, her splendid body, her altogether admirable relish for lovemaking . . . He was almost too successful: the prospect made him inhale sharply, and Otto glanced at him. But then the door opened and Colonel Christian came in, followed by Richard Fischer and Wolfgang Adler, who was still using a stick. Otto swung the door shut. The firm, well-made chunk echoed briefly off the walls. Christian walked over to the desk, while the other men stood beside Otto

Luis and Freddy waited and watched. Christian seemed to be considering something; he rippled his fingertips on the table-top. then breathed in deeply through his nose, and cleared his throat. 'This man Ryan,' he said to Franz, 'is a British spy. Shoot him.'

Luis half-suppressed a snort of amusement. Franz brought his right hand from under the table. It held the same black pistol with the same fat silencer. His arm extended. He shut one eye. The gun made a feathery phphutt and the impact made a thud like a rubber stamp. Freddy Ryan collapsed to his knees as if seized with a compulsion to pray, and at once fell forward, his arms flopping, his face skidding on the steel floor.

You know, somebody's going to get hurt if you keep on doing that,' Luis said.

Nobody moved.

'Two things,' Christian said. 'One: this was not done at Captain Mullen's command, this was my decision entirely. Two: your mission to England will take place as planned. Make sure,' he said to Otto.

Luis felt a stoniness begin to settle on his guts. He moved aside to let Otto kneel and heave Freddy Ryan onto his back. There were odd drops and" dribbles of blood on the floor. The centre of the shirt wore a rich red splash, like a wine-spill , which kept soaking outwards. Using only the tips of his thumb and index finger, Otto lifted the tie so that he could see the bullet-hole. He nodded and dropped the tie. Only then did Luis move to see Freddy Ryan's face. The eyes were halfshut and the mouth was gaping; he looked outwitted. That was unacceptable, it was insulting, it was obscene; Freddy never looked like that, not the real Freddy, never in his life; he was incapable of ... Luis straightened, and stared at Colonel Christian. 'You have really killed him,' he said. He was shaking with rage.

'Of course we have,' Christian said sharply. 'He was a British spy, he had to be killed.'

'But for God's sake!' The room seemed frozen, while Luis was in turmoil. 'You didn't even let him speak!'

'Why should I let him speak? He was spying on us for the British. We found evidence last night when we searched his apartment. I myself double-checked the evidence this morning. The only thing left to do was to kill him. Which I decided you ought to see. Now please get back to your training with . . .'

'Dr Hartmann,' Otto said.

'No,' said Luis, 'I don't believe it.' Part of him wanted to cry, and part of him wanted to fight someone; anyone. 'Somebody's made a mistake, this is all wrong.'

'Ryan made a mistake,' Christian said flatly, 'and now everything is all right. Get back to your training.'

'After this?' Luis cried. 'After this?'

'After this . . .' Christian snapped his fingers at Ryan's body. '. . . it is twice as important to make sure that you succeed. You must try harder than he did, or one day you will look as foolish as he does now.'

'You sonofabitch,' Luis said weakly. 'I'm glad you realise it,' Christian told him. 'That considerably improves your chances of survival.'

Midway through the buffet luncheon in Colonel Christian's room, Luis knew why he felt so good. At first, when he had gone back to Dr Hartmann to finish the lesson in emergency radio repairs, he had felt nothing; it was as if the shock had swept him clean of all emotion, left him scoured and purified; nothing could touch him. That feeling lasted while he methodically reassembled the Abwehr transmitter, comforted by routine. Then, when he tested the set and it worked, perfectly, he was startled by a little surge of pleasure. Otto came in at 12.30 and told him to wash his hands: the Colonel was giving a little luncheon party to discuss Luis's mission.

All the tutors were present; there was wine, and an atmosphere as of a graduation ceremony. Luis was treated with friendly respect. He found himself being gently circulated so that everybody chatted to him but nobody monopolised him. They discussed his progress (which they found encouraging) and his prospects (which they regarded as favourable).

From time to time the embassy waiters attended to his glass or to his plate; once every ten or fifteen minutes Christian drifted across and mentioned some interesting snippet of war news: the triumph of the Luftwaffe in Crete, the amusing likelihood that Vichy France would declare war on Britain if Churchill tried to occupy Syria, the way the German navy was sinking Atlantic convoys faster than Admiral Raeder could count them, which admittedly was not very fast; indeed, said Christian, Raeder's mental arithmetic was probably the biggest obstacle the U-boat captains faced . . . He crowded his shaggy eyebrows together with mock-intensity; people chuckled; Luis found himself smiling. He felt good, and he knew why. Death was intolerable, unthinkable, and so he had turned his back on it; rather than weep, he chose to smile. Christian drifted away again. Wolfgang Adler limped over, said something nice about Luis's aptitude for codes and ciphers,and asked his opinion on current British writers of humorous fiction: Waugh or Wodehouse, for instance, which was better?

It was all very comfortable, very reassuring, slightly flattering, and completely unreal. Luis felt part of his mind clamouring to scream obscenities at them at all, to smash chairs and rip down loaded tablecloths and erupt into a whirling, flailing frenzy of attack: anything, as long as it shattered this gentle, well-mannered burble which was pressing him down like a great, soft, padded lid. But after a minute Otto wandered by and mentioned that they shared a common interest in the cinema; what did Luis think of the director Alfred Hitchcock . . .?

Lunch ended at two o'clock, and Franz Werth took Luis away for an hour's Morse-code, practice.

Ten minutes into the lesson, a man walked briskly along the corridor outside Franz's room. Luis stopped transmitting. As the footsteps came to the door, his heart panicked and tried to out race itself. He looked at Franz: but Franz just smiled, questioningly. He turned and stared at the door. The footsteps went on, fading. Luis was hunched like a question mark; there was sweat on his face and in his armpits.

'You have nothing to be afraid of,' said Franz.

'It sounded like him,' Luis whispered. 'I thought ... I thought it was Freddy.' His voice was stretched thin.

'Your technique is now quite excellent,' Franz said, 'so I think we can concentrate on improving the speed.'

Luis shoved the Morse key aside. 'What did you do with him?'

'Let us try a fresh--'

'Where is he? I want to see him. Freddy was . . .Jesus Christ Almighty!' Luis hammered both fists on the table as grief and fury swept away his flimsy defences. 'He was my friend! Don't you understand? You killed my friend!' Please, please . . .' Franz hurried around the table, chubby face unhappy, neat little hands reaching out to restrain. As soon as the fingers touched him, Luis felt a jolt of revulsion. He struggled to stand but one foot was hooked behind the chair leg. Franz gripped him. He kept making soothing sounds in a curiously fluted voice: 'Sit back now . . . rest . . . please, please ... do rest . . .' There was something wrong with Luis's lungs, he couldn't get enough air, his face felt waxy, his legs were enormously heavy and remote. Then he was uncontrollably sick.

Franz got the wastepaper bin underneath him in time to catch the worst of it, but Luis and the table and the floor were still a mess. Franz sat him in a corner and gave him the bin to hold, while he telephoned somebody, A nurse came with towels and warm water. A doctor came, with strong fingers and a stethoscope which slid over and around Luis's naked chest as if tracking some sly enemy who kept trying to hide in a new place. A porter came, with mops and buckets. Franz had opened a window; now he stood beside it, looking concerned. Finally, Otto Krafft came and, as soon as Luis could walk, led him away to a very quiet bedroom.

Luis lay down and watched the dim dapples of reflected sunlight tremble on the ceiling. He felt gutted. You never cease to surprise me, Mr Cabrillo,' Otto said. 'During your Civil War you must have seen many executions and some a lot less efficient than today's.' Luis thought about that for a while. Undeniably, clubs, bayonets and garrottes were less efficient than Franz's big black pistol. Phphutt-thud. Instant destruction. Probably quite painless. But that was what made it so wrong; it was unacceptable that Freddy Ryan, a splendid man, a gifted, handsome, funny, clever, lively person, could be wiped out so easily. A man with so much to give to life deserved to be able to fight against death, not just be switched off like an electric light. It was all grotesquely lopsided. 'You didn't even give him a chance to say anything,' he said.

'Come; you know what he would have said. He had to be killed; you must see that.'

Otto waited. Luis searched for an escape. Nothing offered itself, but he could not tell Otto that he was right. 'I don't believe Freddy was a British spy,' he muttered.

'The evidence we have absolutely damns him. The humane, as well as the efficient, thing was to kill him at once. He knew that.'

'I don't suppose you will show me the evidence.

'No.'

'It was such a lousy, rotten way to die.' Luis heard the catch in his own voice, and swallowed a couple of times. 'It was such a piece of shit,' he said.

'Again, I am surprised at you,' Otto told him calmly. 'Surely it must be obvious that, if you had gone to England with Ryan, he would have betrayed you to the British.'

Luis turned his head away. He did not want even to see Otto talking.

'When the British arrested you,' Otto went on, 'they would not have been as humane as we were, today. They would have locked you in their Tower of London for a week and then hung you by the neck.' He went on over to the door and opened it. 'I'll leave you to rest,' he said, 'and also, perhaps, to think how lucky you are.'

Luis rested and thought for about five minutes. He did not think how lucky he was. He thought how unhappy he was, and how the person he wanted more than anybody in the world was Julie Conroy. So he got up and went out. Nobody stopped him. It was a half-past three when he stepped into the street.

The cafe baked in a midafternoon fug of sunlight and stale food. Sawdust coated the floor like sediment on a seabed. Behind the bar, a radio with tired valves talked to itself through a continuous crackle and buzz. The only other people in  the place were the proprietor, squat and gloomy, and a scrawny youth. They sat on either side of the counter and watched Luis use the telephone.

He got halfway through dialling the number of the Hotel Bristol and stopped. It was midafternoon. She wouldn't be at the hotel, she would be at work. He hung up. The proprietor found him a copy of the Madrid phone book.

They watched him search for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. It wasn't listed. He looked for MGM. Nothing there either. He the book and tried to think of any other possible way the studio might have chosen to be listed. He gave the book

There were two possibilities. Either Julie Conroy's office had no telephone, or Julie Conroy had no office. Both seemed highly improbable.

Luis asked for the book again. They watched him thumb through it, looking for an entry for Warner Brothers, or Columbia, or Twentieth Century-Fox, or RKO, or Universal. Nothing. No American film studio had an office in Madrid. He gave the book back.

Something else was missing, something besides the MGM office number. Luis leaned on the counter and hid his face in his hands while he thought. He stomach rumbled restlessly it was empty but he was not hungry. The scrawny youth tittered. Luis had an idea and asked for the book. The squat proprietor looked at him for several seconds before he handed it across.

Somebody in Madrid had to be in the business of distributing films, Luis told himself, and the chances were that business was called Film Distribution, or something that. He failed to find anything under F for Film, under C for Cinema, under K for Kine, under M for Motion Pictures, but he scored with I for International. There was a company called Inter-Cine Distribution S.A., at 65 Avenida de Jose Antonio.

Luis carried the book over to the phone and began dialling the number. Halfway through he had a better idea. He hung up, and returned the book. 'Thanks,' he said.

The squat proprietor looked from the book to the telephone to Luis. 'Next time, bring your friends and have a real party,' he said. 'If you have any friends,' he added.

'You are very kind,' Luis said, and walked to the door. 'Your establishment deserves its enormous popularity. Forty thousand flies cannot be wrong.' He stepped into the street.

Inter-Cine Distribution was five minutes' walk away. Luis found the manager in his office. He was holding a length of film up to the light and studying it through a magnifying glass. 'I can't release that, for God's sake,' he muttered. This girl commits all the deadly sins at once, except sloth ... I don't know what the hell they think they're up to in Hollywood. They don't seem to give a damn what the Generalisimo thinks.'

'What does he think?' Luis asked.

'He's against sex, for a start.'

'What other start is there?'

'1 don't know.' The manager rewound the film. 'What can I do for you?'

'I'm trying to trace an American woman called Conroy. She represents MGM in Madrid.'

'I remember the lady. Only you have the wrong name. Hoffman, Mrs Betty Hoffman. She went back to America about a year ago.'

Luis smiled his thanks, turned to go, then paused. 'Did anyone replace her? I mean, who takes care of MGM's business in Europe now?'

'That's easy. We do.'