The Eldorado Network (44 page)

'Yes . . . Didn't he meet an officer, in Oxford? In a bar, wasn't it?'

'The Randolph Hotel, yes. Eldorado got into conversation about his shoulder-badge, which bore the initials C.L.B. It seems that the man must have been joking. Eldorado has discovered that he is in fact a major in the Church Lads' Brigade. That's an organisation rather like the Boy Scouts, only godlier.'

Colonel Christian laughed so much that he stumbled on the aircraft steps and banged his shin. 'That's the cherry on the cake!" he called down, rubbing his leg vigorously. 'Give that man a bonus!'

He disappeared into the cabin. Ten minutes later he was in the sky, heading for Germany, a conference with the head of the Abwehr, Admiral Canaris, and a deserved promotion to brigadier.

Walter Witteridge looked as if he should have been the headmaster of some minor cathedral school. His build was angular, his face suggested skin uncomfortably stretched over a thrusting skull, and his large teeth flashed frequently in an apprehensive smile. Even in the heat of a Lisbon summer, he wore a tweed suit. Luis Cabrillo had never been inside a school commonroom but he had read enough English novels to know how people were supposed to sound in them; and as soon as he heard Walter Witteridge speak, he recognised those tortured vowels: sometimes stretched thin as if to see if the words would snap; sometimes over-inflated, as if the statements were trial balloons, sent up only to be shot down. Luis found it difficult not to twitch and grimace in imitation of the man.

'May I tell you what I find most frightfully intriguing?' Walter Witteridge said, hunching and twisting his body as if his underwear chafed. 'It's this. How, Mr Cabrillo, did you come to ask for an appointment with me? That is to say, with me specifically?' He suddenly scratched the very top of his head, fluffing up the sandy hair. 'How impertinent that sounds! You are fully entitled to ignore it. Let it be stricken from the records. Stricken? Struck?' He glanced longingly at his bookshelf. 'I am an idle fellow, Mr Cabrillo. Pray forgive me.'

'My secretary did it,' Luis said.

'Ah.' Witteridge widened his eyes. 'But then how--'

'She called a friend in the American Embassy in Madrid. He called a colleague in Lisbon, who suggested we should approach you.'

'Fascinating. When one is nominally a member of the Secret Service, you see, these little glimpses have a certain piquancy . . . It is as if one were a voyeur upon oneself.'

'I think he met you at a cocktail party.'

'I'm sure he's absolutely correct. Americans are so blindingly efficient, aren't they? One suspects that their efficiency is a byproduct of their constantly-repeated faith in a Divine Providence. D'you know, before all this unpleasantness broke out I was tempted to write a book called When God Dies, Will He Go To America?

'How interesting,' Luis said.

Witteridge coiled his arms around his head and peered at Luis from behind his splayed fingers. 'My dear fellow,' he said, 'I have been boring you.'

'Not at all.' Luis sat back. 'You must be that Walter Witteridge, the journalist and writer and so on.'

Witteridge nodded glumly. 'Currently I seem to be in my so-on phase. Have you read my book, There's No Future In Progress?'

Luis nodded.

'How awfully gratifying.' But Walter Witteridge seemed saddened.

'I have read all your books,' Luis said.

Witteridge slowly looked up. 'Have you really?' he said. 'Really all?' Now he seemed thoroughly depressed. There was a long pause while he stared past Luis's left ear. Then he braced himself, and engineered a brave, tormented smile. 'I expect you'd like some tea,' he suggested.

'No,' said Luis, firmly. 'I want to tell you why I'm here.'

Witteridge opened his arms wide, and appealed to an invisible audience. 'Why not?' he asked.

Luis told him.

'How fascinating,' Witteridge said, 'And how totally admirable.'

'Well . . . thank you.'

'Not only have you duped the Abwehr in a commendably skilful manner, but you have contrived to make a comfortable living out of it.'

'I suppose so.'

'Then I must congratulate you.' Witteridge came around the desk and shook his hand. 'I do congratulate you.' He completed the circuit and got back into his chair.

'You're very kind,' Luis said. 'I was rather hoping that you would give me some help.'

'My dear chap, I doubt if the British Secret Service could negotiate better terms with the Abwehr on your behalf. My advice is to carry on.'

Luis explained his concern about the risk of inventing information which might accidentally benefit the German war effort.

'Oh ..." Walter Witteridge squeezed and squashed his face into an expression of intense thought. 'Frightfully remote possibility, don't you think? I mean, you would have to be jolly good, wouldn't you? I know you are jolly good. What I'm saying, I suppose, is you'd have to be jolly jolly pood, quite phenomenally jolly good.'

'It could happen, all the same.'

Witteridge entwined his legs, and hooked an arm over and under the arm of his chair. 'If it did ever happen,' he suggested, 'you could always pop round and tell us about it.'

'How could I? I've no way of knowing whether it's happened or not. That's why I thought it was time I started working with your people.'

'My dear boy,' Witteridge said, 'if you think our chaps are going to supply you with dummy information so that you can stay in business with the enemy--'

'No, no. I'm proposing to come and join you, work for you.'

'While continuing to take money from the Germans?.

Luis gestured helplessly. 'There's no alternative to that. They've got to pay me, otherwise--'

Witteridge was shaking his head. 'I don't think the British Secret Service goes in for the sort of thing, old chap. I mean, we're still very oldfashioned about loyalties: if you come to work for us, then you really ought to resign from the competition. Frightfully stuffy and Victorian, I agree, and frankly I very much question the value of it, but there you ire.'

'But if I leave the Abwehr,' Luis said, 'what use will I be to the British Secret Service?'

Walter Witteridge sucked his lips while he considered the question. He slid open a drawer and took out a typewritten paper. 'How willing are you,' he asked, 'to be parachuted into Occupied Europe?'

'Not at all.'

'Then I'm afraid that settles the matter.' Witteridge put the paper back. 'At the moment, so I'm told, we're only looking for chaps who don't mind leaping into the night over France. I wouldn't do it, either; not in a million years.'

Luis stared at him. Witteridge grinned reassuringly. 'So you don't need me at all, then,' Luis said.

'Isn't it more a case of your not needing us? Let me be wildly indiscreet, Mr Cabrillo. I honestly don't believe you would benefit terribly from contact with the people here. Most of them, I've found, are rather dense.'

'Dense?'

'Unimagina'tive. I may say I was disappointed. I certainly expected better things when they recruited me. Brighter things.'

Luis stood. 'All the same,' he said, 'I wish there were some way of eliminating that risk.'

'Put it out of your mind, dear boy,' Witteridge assured him. 'Your little business will obviously go bust within six months, so your anxiety is redundant.'

'Six months, you reckon?' Luis said.

'At the absolute extreme. Nothing lasts in wartime, old chap; nothing. Come back in six months and I doubt very much if even I shall be here.'

Luis returned to the office. Julie stopped typing. 'What did they say?' she asked.

'Buzz off,' Luis said.

She waited. 'Was that all?'

'All that mattered. By the way, I called at the bank afterwards.' He showed her the bank statement. 'See? Another fat bonus. Somebody appreciates us.'

Eagle, at his third attempt, laid a golden egg. It made Otto Krafft, his contoller, quite proud.

'Operation Bandstand,' Christian (now a brigadier) read aloud. 'The invasion of Norway by an Allied force of not less than six divisions including airborne troops, supported by major elements of the British Home Fleet and ..." He fell silent, and raced through the rest of the report with only an occasional muttered comment: '. . . massive mine laying in the Skagerrak . . . co-ordinated civilian uprising . . . decoy attack on Stavanger . . . main bridgehead south of Bergen . . .'At the end he sat for a moment, staring at the final words while his fingers made a little ripple of sound on the paper. He looked up. 'Good for Eagle,' he said.

'I think he deserves an extra bag of birdseed, sir,' said Otto.

'Yes indeed. Send the man buckets of birdseed. I told you Canaris approved my budget proposals? Well, that's what money is for: to keep people like Eagle happy and productive. Chuck the stuff at him with both hands. This is excellent, isn't it? A lot better than his other efforts.'

'I don't think he quite got the hang of it at first, sir,' Otto said. 'But now that he's in London on a long visit, I expect we'll hear a lot from him.'

Christian glanced at the date on the front. 'Only four days old,' he said. 'That's fast.'

'Airmail via Oporto. Eagle's branch office.'

'Yes, of course. Every eagle needs a branch.' Christian flipped through the pages again. 'Norway is a very attractive target for the British, you know. Not far from Scotland, lots of sea for their great big navy to play in, and a chance to cut off supplies of whatever-it-is we get from Scandinavia.'

'Iron ore, sir.'

'Yes. You know, I might prepare a few deft observations on the subject, for Berlin.'

'Don't forget the Russian aspect, sir. I mean to say, with Leningrad about to fall, Stalin must be screaming at the British to do something to relieve the pressure. Operation Bandstand could well be it.'

'Very good, Otto!' Christian bounced to his feet and thrust Eagle's report into his hands. 'By the time you've got that coded I'll have the covering signal ready. Schnell, schnell! He sent Otto trotting happily from the room.

It was •early evening, and the light was as soft as honey. Luis Cabrillo was paging through the 1923 Michelin Guide, looking for Derby, because he thought Rolls-Royce had a factory there, when Stalactite Caverns caught his eyes. According to Michelin they were something to see in Cheddar (Somerset), population 1,975, market day Wednesday. How interesting.

He left Derby and looked up Somerset in Jasper Stem-bridge. Jasper knew all about Cheddar and its limestone. He said the rain ran into cracks, dissolved the limestone, and hollowed out caves. There was even a photograph of one, looking very cold. Luis turned to the GWR Holiday Haunts. It went on at some length about the famous Cheddar caverns that run for more than 600 yards, and included a smart backhander at unthinking people who condemned their exploitation without appreciating how much It cost to install the electric lighting.

'Damn right,' Luis said, making a note of the page. Julie looked up from the latest Abwehr briefing letter. 'Caves,' he explained. 'I can use caves.'

'Oh yes,' she said. 'I remember the picture. They look kind of like railroad tunnels, don't they?'

Luis went back to the photograph. The cave interior looked more like a heap of coal, and there was definitely only one of it. 'Railroad tunnels?' he said. 'This?'

She took the book from him and thumbed through it until she found a picture of a rugged hillside with two big, black, circular holes in it. 'You want caves,' she said, 'we got the best.'

'Dovedale . . . Hey, that's near Derby!' Luis scanned the text.' "These beautiful dales",' he read, ' "through whose narrow troughs the glistening streams are ever eating their way deeper and deeper into the porous limestone". I say, that's excellent.'

'Sounds kind of purple, if you ask me,' Julie stared at the Dovedale photograph. 'Luis, how long since we made love?'

'Wait a minute, wait a minute . . . Here we are, it's under Ashbourne: "Thor's Cave (prehistoric) . . . Derby 13 miles".' He flourished the Michelin. 'That's the answer!'

'No, I don't think it was 1923,' she said.

'A vast underground arms depot! A whole new secret communications centre! Perfect!'

'Didn't we do it once during the Thirties? Late '34 or maybe early '35?'

Luis was scribbling notes. 'Rolls-Royce. They put their factory down in the cave. Bombproof. Obvious!'

'I think I've forgotten how,' she said. 'Is it like the foxtrot or the tango? Which leg do you put forward first? Where do you hold your handbag?'

'Caves,' Luis exulted. 'I'm going to fill up every damn cave in Britain, you watch.'

'We led such sheltered lives at the mission school,' she said, fondling his lapels. 'Please be gentle, or I'll break your arms.'

'I don't know what's the matter with you, Julie,' he said. "We made love last night. Twice.'

'As long ago as that?' she put the big black hat on his head. 'Come on, let's get out of here. You've done enough for one day.'

As they went downstairs, she said: 'By the way: Madrid wants you to go to Glasgow.'

'How can I? I've got all this work to do in Cheddar and Derby.'

'So don't go. Send someone else.'

He thought about it all the way to the street. 'I need more help,' he said. 'The business is getting too big for me. It's time I had more sub-agents.'

She took his arm. 'Damn right. You can't be expected to do everything, can you? Learn to delegate, that's the secret of success.'

'Exactly.' He waved at a taxi. 'On the other hand, if I take on a new sub-agent I shall have to do all his work.'

'But you'll get all his pay.'

'I know, I know.' They climbed into the taxi. 'Glasgow,' Luis said gloomily, and it was several seconds before he realised why the driver was looking at him like that.

Wolfgang Adler put all the blame for his decline on Luis Cabrillo. The Spaniard had wilfully and irresponsibly caused him permanent physical suffering, and as a direct result of that, nobody in the Abwehr now took him seriously when he tried to expose the man's frauds and failures.

Whenever his clerical duties allowed, Wolfgang read and re-read and Eldorado reports, searching for one fatal flaw, just one clear and unarguable blunder which he could take to Christian as proof of what he knew to be true: that Eldorado's success was totally undeserved. Just one. It had to be there, sooner or later. Otherwise what was the point of going on?