The Eldorado Network (42 page)

A package landed in her lap and jolted her awake. Luis was ten minutes early. She opened the big envelope and began reading the contents. He went across to a fountain and took a long time over washing his face. Then he sat on the rim of the fountain and watched a few pigeons. Occasionally he flicked some water and made them jump. His shirt had stuck to his back, but now the cool air around the fountain was beginning to release it.

Julie read the papers, twice. She slid them back into the envelope and tucked the flap in. She waited while he put his hand in the fountain and ran it through his hair. She waited while he wiped his hand on his shirt. She even waited while he leaned back and enjoyed looking at the sky, before she realised that he might sit there for the rest of the evening, so she got up and went over.

'Okay,' she said. 'I believe you.'

He didn't take the envelope. He didn't speak.

'You'd better have this back,' she said. 'And this.' She held out the letter from the Abwehr in Madrid. .    He examined the middle finger of his right hand, calloused from the pressure of a pen, and he sucked the callous. 'Do you think my answers will satisfy them?' he enquired.

'No. I'm sorry, Luis. I invented different questions. You see, I had to make sure you're as good as you said.'

He turned his head, slowly, and looked at the envelope. 'So that's all wasted.' His eyelids were heavy with fatigue, but his eyes had a curious glitter. 'Keep it,' he said. 'Go away. I have seen enough of you.'

She went away, turned north, walked halfway up the Avenida da Liberdade, found the Pan Am office. She changed her ticket for cash, and checked into the nearest hotel. 'One night,' she told the desk clerk. 'Uma noite.' Luis Cabrillo had seen enough of her, and she could understand that; but she was far from finished with him. The man was a genius, and she was still in love with him.

As July became August of 1941, Europe was remarkably peaceful. True, in certain parts of Germany at night there was some risk of being hurt by a bomb; but it was a very slight risk. Usually the R.A.F. bombers completely missed their targets. The people most in danger were the aircrew: in 1941 the British bomber offensive killed more R.A.F. personnel than German civilians.

The real war was taking place far away, and Germany was doing very well. More U-boats than ever were prowling the Atlantic, and the British had had to cut their scale of rations. Rommel had just made mincemeat of a British counter-attack and was now poised to gobble up Egypt. In Russia, three German army-groups had smashed clean through the frontier defences. In the north and south these armies were reaching for Leningrad and Kiev; in the centre they had taken Smolensk. In midsummer 1941, the Third Reich thrived like a booming multinational corporation, and its off-shoots in Lisbon and Madrid were correspondingly busy.

Luis Cabrillo worked an eight-hour day: from nine until one; then a long lunch and a short nap; and from three until seven. On the day after they parted at the fountain he had already written over two thousand words when Julie came into his office at noon to return the Abwehr briefing letter. Creativity gripped him like a mild drug. Even when he stood up, brought her a chair, politely thanked her, she could see that his mind was elsewhere.

'Don't you think you ought to read it?' she asked.

'Plenty of time. According to the system, it won't reach me in London until tomorrow.' He tossed the letter into a wire tray, and squared his shoulders. 'I apologise for my churlish behaviour,' he said.

'Hell, no, forget it. I was the one who was wrong.'

'That does not excuse my ill manners.'

'I gave you a very hard time.'

'Surely that is exactly when courtesy and consideration are most needed.'

'Look, if anybody loused things up, I did. For Pete's sake, • I might have killed you.'

He dismissed the idea with a brisk gesture. 'You were in much greater danger. It was criminally careless of me to leave such a stupid weapon lying around.'

'It went off with one almighty hell of a bang.'

They looked at the ragged hole in the picture-rail. 'I don't think the other tenants were altogether convinced that it was an exploding lightbulb,' Luis said. 'There was a strong smell of gunpowder, and several of them wanted to know why you were changing the lightbulb in the middle of the afternoon.'

'Good question.'

'Not at all. I pointed out the great difficulty of changing a lightbulb after dark. But a good deal of curious sniffing took place, all the same.'

'Gee, I'm sorry.'

'It was my fault.'

That seemed to complete the exchange of apologies. Luis went back to his desk. They sat in silence. A breath of wind crept through the open window and curled a sheet of paper, until he put a bottle of ink on it. 'When do you go to America?' he asked.

She stiffened. 'Who says I'm going to America?'

'The ticket was in your bag. I searched your bag, you see,' Luis said. 'It seemed an obvious thing to do, in the circumstances. If you remember.'

Julie remembered. 'I guess you're right . . . Anyway, I'm not going to America. Things are different today. I don't even have a ticket any more.'

'Oh,' Luis said. 'I see.' He squared-off his papers and put them to one side. After a moment he placed the ink-bottle on top of them. 'Well,' he said.

'Listen, you great Spanish dummy, is that all you can say?'Julie cried.

'What's wrong?' He looked slightly alarmed.

'Everything's wrong! Why the hell are we sitting here talking about airline tickets, for Chrissake?'

He thought hard. 'As distinct from what?'

She got up and kicked a filing cabinet. It made a gloomy boom. 'I can remember, and it wasn't so long ago, when you came crashing into my hotel and let it be known that you loved me.'

'Yes, that's true.' He shuffled in his chair. 'In Madrid, it was a luxury we could both afford. What's more, in those days we had a lot in common.'

'Sure. Still do.'

'I believe there were even occasions when«you said that you loved me.'

'Thank God for that. I thought you'd forgotten.'

He opened a drawer and took out her letter. 'This isn't exactly an expression of warmest affection,' he said.

'What d'you expect, after all your lying and cheating? Monogrammed condoms?'

'I didn't expect anything.'

'Okay, I love you, goddam it. Is that good enough?'

Luis cleared his throat. 'I'm not sure. Yesterday you tried to kill me.'

She gasped. 'You just said that didn't matter.'

'Oh no. It was the danger that didn't matter. Life itself

Las little value. But your gesture was insulting. To murder

someone is the supreme act of contempt. That's what makes

it such a cheap act. There's absolutely no respect involved.'

'But all that was yesterday! Things are different today. Anyway, I wouldn't ever have wanted to kill you unless you once mattered to me so damn much. Can't you see that?'

'I'm not sure.' He stroked his young moustache. 'To be absolutely honest, I'm not really sure of anything any more. I mean, I'm fairly sure I told you all those lies in Madrid because you were important at the time, but since then I've been doing a tremendous amount of lying to just about everyone, so maybe I've started lying to myself as well. It gets to be a habit, you see, and you can't stop. I mean, I could probably get up now and say, "I love you, Julie," and I might really mean it. Or I might quite possibly be lying.'

'Try it,' she said,

'For example, when you came in just now I was writing about a new British tank called the "crusher", and I really meant every word.'

'Try it, Luis,' she said.

'But it doesn't exist,' he added.

'I don't care.'

'As far as I know, that is. Perhaps it does exist.'

'For God's sake, Luis!'

'All right, I love you,' he said fast.

'Oh, forget it, I don't care any more. It doesn't matter. God, my wrist hurts.'

'How did it sound?' he asked. 'Did it sound right?' He got out the aspirin.

'It sounded lousy.' She salivated hard and swallowed an aspirin. It went down painfully slowly.

'Then maybe I don't love you. How does that sound?'

'Go to hell.'

He shook the aspirin bottle. 'Another?'

She glared. 'You'd like me to take an overdose?'

He wandered away and looked out of the window. It was a short view of about six feet, onto a blank wall. 'What are we going to do?' he asked.

'Well ... I can't go home. No money. And Harry's disappeared.' It was beginning to sound like a very negative answer. 'I suggest I stay here. You've got money, and you look like you need some help.'

Luis thoroughly scrutinised the wall. 'Can you type?' he asked.

'I can learn.' As soon as the words were out, she recognised them, and uttered an amused snort which made him turn. 'Last time I said that, I was in the British Embassy in Madrid,' she explained. 'Just as well they didn't believe me then.'

'Why?'

'I was trying to get into England.'

That made him blink. 'Good heavens above,' he said. 'What on earth for?' And then his brain caught up. 'Oh, oh, oh,' he said.

'Don't take it personally, Luis. It's just a passing madness. Like yours.'

He heaved in a deep breath, stretching his chest, flooding his lungs. 'What a lot of terrible rubbish you talk,' he said. They came together, cautiously, avoiding her broken wrist and his grazed jaw, and briefly kissed. 'Maybe you should give me lessons,' she mumbled. 'At least your brand of rubbish makes money.'

'There is that to be said for it,' he agreed.

Julie collected her bags from the pensdo and moved into Luis's apartment. For the next week she spent every day with him in the office. While he. wrote his reports, she read his files; and when he took a break, she asked questions: about Seagull, about Knickers, about the Abwehr's scale of payment for sub-agents, about his controllers in Madrid. Eventually she had a grasp of the entire operation.

'One thing worries me,' she said. They were at lunch, eating baked stuffed crab and drinking vinho verde in a rooftop restaurant with a view of all the hills of Lisbon. Her wrist was mending; now she could manage a knife and fork. 'They must have other agents. What if one of them double-checks some of your information? And finds that it's all baloney?'

'All right. Let's examine that.' Luis ate a little salad while he organised his thoughts. 'As far as I know, Christian has only one other agent in England. He's called Mercury, which is a joke, because he's really very slow. He never takes risks, never argues, never contradicts, just sits tight and plays safe, which probably explains how he's survived so long. Nobody in Madrid has much faith in him. If Christian asked Mercury for a second opinion, my guess is Mercury would just leave it for a couple of days, and then radio back a confirmation.'

'On the other hand, he might actually do what he's told and drop you in the sewage.'

'Then they have to choose who to believe.'

'He's got seniority.'

'I'm getting paid more.'

The waiter came by and topped up their glasses. Luis held a fingertip in the sparkling fizz, and licked it. 'Anyway,' he said, 'the Germans are very painstaking people. Christian would probably ask me to explain the discrepancies.'

'Which you can't do.'

'Who says? I simply point out the time-lapse between my report and Mercury's--  a couple of weeks, at least. For instance, suppose I find a Commando training school in north Wales but Mercury doesn't. So what? The Commandos moved elsewhere.'

'Are Commandos really that mobile?'

'My Commandos are.'

They strolled through the botanical gardens on the way back to the office, taking wide detours to avoid the sprinklers which hissed and pattered in glittering sweeps, cooling the air and sharpening the scent of the flowers. She said: 'It's not going to last, though; is it?'

'Of course it's going to last.'

'Come on, be your age, Luis. What are you doing? You're flying a kite, that's all, and it's a great big kite but one day the wind's going to drop and then what'll you do?'

He stopped. 'Look,' he said. 'I'm not a suicide. I'm a businessman. I do just what Ford Motors does, and Coca-Cola, and MGM. I give the customer what he wants. When I sit down to write, I ask myself two questions. What would the Abwehr like to know next? And what is Britain probably doing now? Then I put the two answers together. I tell you, it works.'

'And I tell you it's crazy.'

'Okay, good, fine, it's crazy. 'They began walking again. 'If it makes me the richest maniac in Lisbon, I can stand a little insanity.'

'Certainly. But each section is terribly independent and jealous of the others. When I was there, Madrid Abwehr wouldn't even speak to Paris Abwehr.'

'Ah. So they're not likely to compare reports.'

'Not much.'

'But somebody might. I mean, who gets all the reports in the end?'

'Berlin, I suppose.'

'I have to pee,' she said.

When she came back he had made a pot of tea, and he was browsing through the 1937 GWR Holiday Haunts. 'Budleigh Salterton, bracing climate, pebbly beach,' he said. ' "Its tranquillity soothes those who have become wearied of the bustle of modern life." I think I might give them a couple of batteries of heavy anti-aircraft guns.'

'To protect the tranquillity?'

He sipped his tea. 'Don't know. Something important must be going on there.'

'Well, forget it for a minute. I've been thinking about your Abwehr set-up. Look: suppose there are ten sections operating from ten cities. That means they're running a total of maybe two dozen German agents inside Britain right now.'

'Yes, at least that number.'

'Well, hell ..." She took her cup in her left hand and rested it on her cast. 'You're outnumbered, Luis! Those guys are all selling the genuine article. When they dig up some dirt it's real dirt, the stuff you can grow things in. Sooner or later some smart-ass at Abwehr headquarters is going to start noticing that one guy is always out of step. Those square heads are full of square brains, remember.'