The Eldorado Network (35 page)

'Whose idea was that silliness outside the British Embassy?' Christian asked.

'Don't know, sir.'

'Childish self-indulgence. Just the sort of idiotic provocation that gives us a bad name in the diplomatic corps.'

'Yes sir.' Otto slit a few more envelopes. 'I heard a rumour that Captain Mullen has set up a new team to encourage anti-British agitators,' he said. 'Perhaps they were behind it.'

'Mullen set up a new team?' Christian squared his shoulders and stared. 'That's the first I heard of it. I was with him yesterday and he said nothing. I don't think he should create a new unit without at least consulting me.'

'You know what these rumours are like, sir,' Otto said shuffling the correspondence into a pile. 'Probably nothing in it.'

Christian sucked his teeth. 'Mullen's so damn short sighted he can't see beyond tomorrow. Quick results: that' all he can think of. Whether they might not be the right results is something that doesn't seem to occur to him.'

Christian wandered away into his room, and Otto saw him lunging about, swatting flies with a rolled-up copy of Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung. After a while he came back looking more restless than ever, 'You know what he'll say don't you?' he said. 'He'll want to know why we can't show any results.'

'Eldorado's only been gone just over a week, sir.'

'Listen: von Bock has advanced a quarter of the way to Moscow in just over a week! Raeder's U-boats have sunk two dozen ships in just over a week!' Christian threw his newspaper into a waste bin. 'I can't afford to wait while Eldorado learns his trade. 'Let's face it, the lad's a lousy spy, he looks like Rudolph Valentino playing the Duke of Windsor, mean who's going to trust him? Anyway I don't suppose he can tell the difference between a bomb-aimer and a boy scout. No, he's a waste of time. I think I'll switch him to sabotage.'

'Well now . . .' Otto risked a smile. 'That's a bold decision, sir.'

'Hit their morale, that's what we've got to do. Mercury can put Eldorado in touch with those I.R.A. fanatics from Ireland. I don't care what they blow up, it doesn't matter, in fact it's better if the sabotage is utterly random. Senseless, sporadic destruction: even Eldorado should be capable of that, shouldn't he?'

Otto didn't answer. He was looking at the first page of a six-page letter, closely typed. He leaned back and held it at arm's length, then, with a little snort of surprise riffled through the other pages. He got up, stapled the corners together, and handed the document to Christian 'Eldorado's first report, sir,' he said. 'He seems to be thoroughly enjoying himself in London.'

Christian took it and fanned himself with it. 'Fancy that, he said. 'Bang goes my bright idea.'

Next morning Christian called a breakfast meeting to consider the Eldorado report. All those attending --  the men who had played a major part in Luis's training-- had been given copies to read the night before.

Christian tapped salt into his boiled egg, and called for comments.

The others looked at each other, politely deferring. Richard Fischer paused, then raised one cautious finger. Christian waved him on.

'In my opinion this is undoubtedly Cabrillo's work, sir,' he said. 'The style, the syntax, the overall format: it couldn't be anyone else. I believe it's authentic.'

'Did anyone suggest otherwise?' Christian asked. 'No sir, but since the channel of communication used is, I believe, new and different, I thought it best to . ..." Fischer let the sentence die while he buttered some toast.

'So he didn't use radio,' Franz Werth said. 'I suspected not, with a message of such length.'

'Eldorado has his own private channel,' Christian said. "An official in the Spanish Embassy in London puts Eldorado's report in their diplomatic bag. The bag travels airmail to Lisbon and another kind gentleman in their Lisbon Embassy extracts it and mails it to us.'

'Presumably those are the two men he refers to in Appendix "A",' Dr Hartmann said. There was a flapping of pages. "Financial remuneration of communications assistants",' "ire read out.' "I have agreed a rate of twenty English pounds per week for BLUEBIRD (in London) and twenty-five U.S. dollars per week for STORK (in Lisbon). This is best paid direct to them by me. Please credit my Lisbon account accordingly".'

'Steep,' said Wolfgang Adler.

'Surely not.' Franz swallowed hastily and licked crumbs from his lips. 'Not if the system works as well as this.' 'I like it,' Fischer said. 'It's as rapid and painless as any method I've come across.' 'Agreed,' Christian grunted. 'Pay him, Otto.' 'Yes sir. This stuff on page three about their new tank is very interesting,' Otto said. 'In many ways it parallels what our own people are working on. Greater speed, heavier armour-plating, automatic gun-sight ...'

During the next twenty minutes, each man picked his own plums out of the report. Dr Hartmann was impressed by Luis's summary of new bomber airfields in eastern England. Fischer endorsed what Luis had to say about the effect of rationing on morale, based on Fischer's own experience in other wars. Franz got quite excited over Luis's analysis of British convoy strategy and how it might be turned to advantage by the U-boat packs. Even Wolfgang Adler conceded that Luis was probably not far wrong in his brief review of British, Russian and Axis prospects as seen by officials of the major neutral embassies in London. It became quite a cheerful and optimistic meal.

'Thankyou, gentlemen,' Christian said. 'It seems that we are all pleased with Eldorado.'

'After only a week at work,' Franz pointed out, 'this is a remarkable achievement.'

Christian wiped his mouth, and stood up. The others stood too. 'Nobody has overlooked anything?' he inquired.

Dangerous question. No takers.

'I operate on the basis that all agents are fools and villains until proved otherwise,' Christian declared. He rapped the report with his knuckles. 'For all we know, Eldorado wrote this while sitting in a pub in Piccadilly, gathering worthless gossip.' He stabbed Otto in the chest with a hard finger and made him wince. 'Get all this in code and have it transmitted to Mercury as soon as you can. Tell him I want it checked, and I want the answers on my desk in forty-eight hours. All the answers.'

'Yes sir.' Otto hurried away.

'I suppose it's not impossible,' Wolfgang suggested, 'that Mercury himself is sitting alongside Cabrillo in the very same pub.'

'Mercury doesn't drink,' Christian said. 'It gives him heartburn.'

Wolfgang grunted. The meeting broke up.

When Julie left the British Embassy, Spanish workmen were sweeping up the last of the broken glass and carpenters were nailing boards over the ground-floor windows. She wondered if the Falange organisers had had them standing by during the demonstration. That would be very Spanish, she decided gloomily. Everything here was such a damn ritual. Even when they bust you with a rock, there was nothing personal about it. It was just a formal rock.

She felt restless and dissatisfied, and decided to visit Angela, maybe see if she could call up some friends and all go out for dinner. But Angela, when she opened the door,. was obviously in the middle of packing.

'Oh, Christ . . . You're not leaving too, are you?' Julie stepped over open suitcases and between heaps of coat-hangers. 'Madrid's going to be like the tomb, at this rate.'

'Tomb?' Angela didn't know the word.

'You know: dead, buried, cemetery . . .'

'Ah, yes.' She went on wrapping shoes in tissue paper. '"Well, for me, Madrid is a cemetery.'

Julie sat on the arm of a sofa and watched. It was not a happy line of conversation to follow, but what else was there? 'You still reckon Freddy's finished, then.'

'Oh, I know he is dead.' Without pausing in her packing, Angela very lightly touched the middle of her forehead. Here, I know it.'

Julie thought: She seems very tough about it. She said, "You can never be sure until there's a body.'

Angela just looked at her: a cool, Mediterranean, Catholic look which said Death is death so don't give me that fuzzy Protestant optimism.

'Supposing the worst,'Julie said. 'Any ideas about what • might have happened?'

'It was the war. Freddy was doing something.'

'Spying?'

'Maybe. Or maybe catching spies.' Angela began sorting through a pile of books, keeping some, dropping others into a waste basket. 'Often they are the same, I think.' The basket shuddered to the thud of books. 'Ask your Luis.'

'I can't. He went away, to England. That's what he said, anyway ...'

'I go to Brazil,' Angela said. 'Away from the war, away from stupid fools like Freddy and Luis. I am glad Luis went away. If he had stayed I think I would have tried to kill him too.'

'You would?' Julie studied her intently and saw nothing but porcelain calm. 'What did Luis ever do to you?'

'I think he killed Freddy.'

Julie felt slightly sick. The effect of so much alcohol, pain and medication seemed to have weakened her body until with this last shock it suffered a thousand tiny cracks. She got up and walked to the window. There was a man in the apartment opposite doing bar-bell exercises. She took a couple of deep breaths. 'You don't know that,' she said.

'I know that Freddy was thinking of killing Luis. So I think Luis acted first.'

The man doing the bar-bell exercises saw her watching and moved out of sight. 'That's crazy,' she said.

'Crazy to kill someone before he kills you?'

Julie turned away from the window, massaging her face to drive away the weary, grubby feeling. 'It's all guesswork,' she said. 'You don't know--'

'I knew Freddy. For years I have known Freddy, and sometimes he had to kill people, I don't know why but I could tell when he was thinking of it. And at that tennis game I caught him looking at Luis, very serious and sad, and I knew straight away, because I have seen that look before.'

'Oh . . .' Julie let out a long cry of despair. 'Why can't they all just sell goddam insurance, like any normal idiot?' She pounded the wall with her fists.

'If you want to break something,' Angela said, 'I have no use for those ornaments.'

Julie kicked a suitcase instead.

'A long time ago I discovered that everything is a game for men like that,' Angela said. 'Look at this.' She showed Julie a cartoon sketched on the flyleaf of a book. It showed Angela playing cricket, naked except for the huge pads strapped to her slim legs and a cap with a peak like an eagle's beak. She looked funny and happy and exciting. 'Freddy drew that,' she said. 'He was very clever at some things.' She threw the book into the basket.

Later they went out for dinner. It was pleasant, but they had nothing left to say. They parted without emotion and without promises. When Julie got back to the Hotel Bristol the night clerk had a letter for her. She recognised Luis's writing, and all the wretchedness she had carefully pushed away during dinner came sweeping back. She gave the letter back to the man. 'I'll pick it up in the morning,' she said.

In Spain breakfast is not so much a meal as a gesture, something to acknowledge the passage of night. Julie woke up with a shoulder so stiff and sore that she had to eat her breakfast one-handed, and this gave her an excuse for making it last. Nevertheless the time came when she had finished all the rolls and drunk all the coffee and it seemed Acre was nothing for it but to go and get Luis's letter.

She used the back of her knife to rake all the crumbs and flakes of bread into a line. She shaped the line into a square, and turned the square into a triangle. The whole situation was so damn obvious that unless she was going to be utterly dishonest, there was only one decision. Angela believed that Luis had killed Freddy, and Angela knew a lot about that .sort of thing. Luis had ducked and dodged so many questions that he was obviously up to the neck in some kind of dirty work. He was very cosy with the German Embassy; almost certainly they were paying him; and now he was in England. Put all that together, and Luis came out at best a mercenary and at worst a hired assassin. Okay, she told herself, so he's got a nice face, so he's hot stuff in the sack, so what? Do you seriously imagine you have any future with a like that?

She went to the front desk and asked for her letter, crumpled it in her fist, and took it up to her room. She got some matches. The letter was squeezed into a hard ball. That would never burn. She opened it out. The handwriting was bold and fluent. Did that reveal the man, or conceal him? Luis had seemed childishly honest at times. So what? Absolutely honest children could also be the most sadistic, fascist little bastards . . . 'Oh, the hell with everything!' she said angrily, and ripped open the envelope. There was a single sheet of paper inside.

Dear Mrs Conroy:

All week I have been looking forward to writing this letter, and now that I find some spare time at last, there is almost nothing I can tell you which is new. This is because the British censorship is very strict, so I cannot even mention the weather here, or describe London, or tell you about my business dealings, in case the censor decides that it might give the Axis powers some useful information.

So I shall merely say that I am well and working hard. I don't see how those facts can make any difference to anyone, except perhaps to you!

I miss Madrid very much, and I miss you a very great deal. It is hard for me to make friends here. In any case, I am not sure that I want to. This is a poor letter. There is so much that I should be able to say, and cannot.

Yours sincerely, Luis Cabrillo.

Julie read it quickly, twice, and put it away. She was relieved and disappointed. It is hard for me to make friends here . . . Tough shit, Luis; you should've thought of that before you took the lousy job. She imagined him tramping around Westminster and Whitehall and Leicester Square, snooping on everyone, trusting no one, going home to a lonely bed, with a headful of crappy secrets and a gutful of lousy rations. Half a gutful more likely. You dumb joker, Luis, she thought. You sold out, didn't you? How in God's name could anyone so smart be so stupid)

The rest of the day was a waste of time. Her shoulder throbbed. She couldn't sit or lie comfortably. Her monthly cheque still hadn't arrived. The skies clouded over in the afternoon and kept a grey padded lid on the city. She wandered around her room, sometimes fiddling with the dials of a radio in search of the BBC; but the dry static of the Spanish plateau crackled endlessly, and all she could find was meaningless European gabble, or shrunken accordion-music. When dusk came she gave up, took a long hot bath, and stunned the ache in her shoulder with a litre of wine. Even so, sleep came slowly. Luis's letter had been no help to her. He'd gone away; he should have stayed away.