The Eldorado Network

by Derek Robinson

  'You didn't.' Christian dropped into an armchair and hooked a leg over the side.

  Luis was briefly baffled. 'Oh,' he said. 'Um . . . Didn't I?'

  'We had you stretched out stark naked downstairs while we went through your clothes. When I say "we", I don't mean "me".' He looked at his hands as if he might have forgotten to wash them. 'There was nothing to find, was there? No papers, no money, no wallet, no keys, no cards, no matches, no diary, no driver's licence, no ticket-stubs, no tattered receipts, not even an airmail envelope from Moscow with an incriminating telephone number scribbled on the back. What's wrong with you, Mr Cabrillo? Don't you ever do anything?'

  'I blow my nose from time to time,'Luis said. He found an armchair facing the colonel and dropped into it, hooking his leg over the side.

  'You blow your nose.' Christian unhooked his leg. Luis unhooked his leg. 'Tell me ..." Christian cupped his hands behind his head and slumped deeper in the chair. Luis duplicated the action. They half lay, their heads tugged upright, and examined each other. 'What exactly have you been up to?'

  'I've been in prison,' Luis said.

  'Your hands are too smooth.'

  'They let me wear gloves.'

  'Why should they do that?'

  'So I could play the violin again.'

  Christian moved his hands to the top of his head. Luis did the same. Down on the street, some distant motorist played La Cucaracha on his horn, twice. 'I can't play that, though,' Luis said. 'Too many flats.'

  Christian sat up and folded his arms; so did Luis. 'This is all nonsense,' the German said. 'I second that!' Luis cried.

  He saw the other man dip his head and tighten his lips, and before he could stop himself Luis had mimicked the action. Sweet Jesus, he thought, now you've gone too far, he's going to kick you out into the street . . . But Christian merely said, in a fed-up voice, 'I don't intend to waste any more time.'

  'Well, thank God for that!' Luis exclaimed. He heaved himself out of the chair. 'Because as far as I can see, all you've done since I walked in here is ... is ... Do you know the verb "to bugger about"?'

  'I can guess what it means.'

  'Well, you people have buggered me about all afternoon. And for what? Fifteen hundred pesetas?' Luis astonished and slightly frightened himself by pulling out the banknotes and tossing them into the colonel's lap. 'Now please listen carefully, because I shall never say this again. I am serious when I tell you that I wish to spy for Germany in England. But if you think your grubby little retainer has bought you the right to treat me like an idiot child, then your aims and mine are poles apart.' Luis dusted his hands and headed for the door.

  'It's locked,' Christian said.

  'Well, I expect the key's hidden somewhere obvious,' Luis said evenly. 'You look in the piano stool and I'll go and throw Otto out of the window.'

  'Here, take it back.' Christian came over and stuffed the money into Luis's pocket. 'I've just made it up to two thousand. You're worth it, d'you know that? And I'll tell you why. You're a games-player, Mr Cabrillo. You take chances. The British are great games-players but we Germans are not. I think maybe you can beat the British at their own game.'

  'Which is what?' Luis asked.

  'Cheating.'

  Christian opened the door. It had not been locked. 'That's dishonest,' Luis pointed out.

  'Yes, I try to stay in practice,' Christian said modestly. 'Come back and see me tomorrow morning at nine.'

  They actually shook hands, and Colonel Christian actually looked happy.

  Chapter 16

  Otto escorted Luis down to the lobby. He was delighted to hear that Luis would be returning next morning, and invited him to come earlier and have breakfast. Luis thanked him but declined, saying that he always breakfasted on kippers, a habit he had picked up in England, and he did not wish to put the German Embassy to any inconvenience. Otto laughed and promised him excellent kippers. Luis said he was sorry about Pongo, who after all had only been doing his best. His real name was Wolfgang Adler, Otto said, and he was accustomed to breaking his bones: he ski-ed every weekend at the Navacerrada Pass . . .

  They were strolling past the official at the reception desk when Luis remembered the woman.

  He turned, and looked, and saw her almost at once: still in the same chair, in the same attitude, with the same expression. Still the leopard amongst the gazelle; still able to make his head tingle for no reason that he could have named.

  'You forgot something?' Otto enquired.

  'That woman over there. In the white sleeveless dress, no hat. Who is she?'

  Otto turned aside, murmured to the official, and brought back and embassy form. Luis read: CONROY, Julia, followed by something in German plus a date and a time. The date was yesterday's, the time was 9 a.m. 'The lady does not seem to be getting much attention,' Luis said.

  'Oh, some of these enquiries are unbelievably complicated,' Otto said. 'When there is a war on --'

  'My case was not exactly straightforward, but you dealt with it speedily. Very speedily.'

  'Well . . . I'll try and see that she's attended to first thing in the morning, if you feel--'

  'Why not now?'

  'Now? It may be very complicated.'

  'Surely all the more reason to start as soon as possible.'

  Otto's smile was growing tired and losing its grip. He took back the embassy form and walked over to the official, snapping his fingers as he went. They talked, and Otto glanced through another, bigger form 'Frau Conroy,' he called.

  She got up from her seat and crossed the room, moving easily, like a good tennis player after three hard sets and a hot shower. Luis ambled nearer. 'Frau Conroy, I regret this delay,' Otto said, still speaking in English. 'A telegram will be sent to Paris tonight. Perhaps if you could return here tomorrow . . .?'

  'You're very kind,' she said, but there was a slight twist to her smile which made Otto hunch his shoulders as if in self-defence. For a moment nobody spoke, all three of them caught up in the elegant dishonesty of the situation. Then Otto bowed, and nodded to Luis. 'Until tomorrow,' he said.

  'Until kippers,' Luis agreed.

  As they came out of the embassy he began: 'Permit me to introduce myself--'

  'I know who you are,' she said. 'You're the Count of Zamora and Eggs Benedict.'

  'I should explain--'

  'No, don't bother.' She signalled a cab. 'Because by a curious coincidence I'm not Eleanor Roosevelt, either. Can I drop you somewhere?'

  Luis hadn't been in a car since he crawled, head buzzing, out of that wreck in the middle of a forest of softly whispering midday trees five miles outside Guernica, years before. Now all the flashy excitement of motoring came rushing back to him as he smelled old leather upholstery, overworked engine oil and bitter-sweet exhaust fumes. The taxi took off with astonishing acceleration, or so it seemed to him, and manoeuvred quite dashingly; but then so did all the other traffic: it zipped and whirled and stopped itself inches from disaster and leaped away again, brilliantly yet casually. Luis leaned back and admired their driver's slick-ness, but he also wished that the man would drive a little more slowly. All these flashing streets, all these giddy turns, were making him feel drunk with speed.

  But not for Frau Conroy. She, he noticed, was minding her own business, and a very tranquil job she made of it.

  They sat without speaking until Luis suddenly realised that they were getting near her hotel, and therefore near to parting; which would leave him alone in the middle of Madrid, and that prospect scared him. On impulse, he leaned forward and pressed the driver's shoulder. 'Cava Baja,' he said. They turned sharp left. 'Why did you do that?' she asked. 'We are being followed. I have to shake them off.' Her eyebrows rose and fell. 'Who's following us?' 'German agents. In the third car behind.' She turned and looked. 'The third car behind is a bus,' she said.

  'Make it Cuchilleros instead,' Luis told the driver urgently. 'This way is better,' he explained to her. 'Buses do not use the Calle de Cuchilleros.'
>
  'They don't use the Calle Cava Baja either,' she said, 'especially the one behind us, which is going to the Puerta de Toledo.'

  'You would prefer Cava Baja? It is not too late to change.' 'I would prefer my hotel, that's what I would prefer.' 'There are several excellent bars on Cuchilleros.' She moistened her lips. 'You should have said that first, not last.'

  'I do not mean to disparage the bars on Cava Baja, which are also fine bars.'

  'Don't louse things up, friend. We can drink to Cava Baja when we get to Cuchilleros.'

  'The bus has gone,' Luis observed with satisfaction. 'We have shaken off the bus.'

  'Terrific,' she said. 'Nothing worse than a grabby bus.' They bounced and swung through some of the oldest parts of Old Madrid, all cobblestones and high, balconied houses. The streets never held a straight line for more than a block; they curved and narrowed into sharp turns only to broaden out into odd-shaped little plazas from which three or four equally twisting streets ran away and disappeared. Occasionally a massive church or a hulking citadel caught the eye, but they were rapidly lost as the taxi turned and turned, and turned again. When it stopped Luis had his money ready. He hurried her into the nearest bar and found a table at the back.

  'From here we can watch who arrives,' he said.

  'Uh-huh.' she took in the walls, curving inwards to form an arched roof, all beige with smoke and scratched with ten thousand names, messages, slogans; the bar, brown and battered; the clusters of garlic and fists of sausage hanging from the ceiling: and the customers, all talking, none listening. 'And what do we do if a couple of gorillas from the Gestapo turn up?' she asked. A man who was thinking of something else brought them two glasses of wine and a saucer of bits of smoked ham, and went away.

  'You are safe with me,' Luis said. 'As you saw, I am not without influence at the German Embassy.'

  'Listen, I was safe before I met you.' She ate some ham. 'Who the hell are you, anyway? Since you're not the Count of Thingummy.'

  'You seem very sure of that.' Luis stretched his legs, sucked in his cheeks and looked down his nose at the prawn shells littering the floor.

  'Sure I'm sure. No Count of Thingummy would walk into a waiting room, sit down among the peasants, and fill out a form. Right?'

  Luis flared his nostrils a little and stored that information away for future use. 'It was an alias,' he agreed. 'My name is Luis Cabrillo. I am a representative of the International Red Cross, and we are trying to trace persons missing as a result of the recent hostilities.'

  'Are you, now?' The information impressed her; she studied his face carefully. 'Well, that's certainly a very decent job to be doing. Damn decent.'

  He bowed his head in acknowledgement. 'And what brings you to Madrid, Senora Conroy?'

  'If you're going to be Luis, I'd better be Julie . . . Me, I work for the movies. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. We've got a lot of unfinished business in Europe since Hitler took over. Reels of film lying all over the place, that sort of thing. I'm trying to straighten it out.'

  'You are American?'

  'From California.'

  'Ah ..." Luis was enormously pleased: far from being a German (even an English-speaking German) she was an American, a genuine Hollywood American. It was the first time he had met anyone from California. Now he understood why she had astonished him at first sight: this was a Californian who worked for MGM! There was a gentle glow about her, a cool aura, like those publicity stills where they fogged the background to make the star stand out. He signalled for more wine.

  'I still don't see why the Germans should want to have you followed,' she said.

  'Oh, they follow everybody, they are very suspicious people. You see, my work for the International Red Cross brings me in contact with other embassies. I dislike people interfering with my private life.'

  Cigar smoke was beginning to turn the air silky blue. It drifted in layers, like the ghosts of ancient banners. 'What do they put in those things?' she asked. 'Apart from bullshit, I mean.'

  'Bullshit?' Luis repeated. ,

  'Yes.' He still looked uncertain, so she explained: 'Bullshit. The shit of bulls. Bovine dung. Cattle crap.'

  'Ah!' Luis exclaimed. 'Of course, bull-shit. Yes, I understand. As in horseshit. And chickenshit. Also dogshit.' He beamed his understanding. 'All good fertiliser,' he said.

  'Not bullshit. That does nothing any good. I should know, I've come across enough of it lately.'

  'Here? In Madrid?'

  'Everywhere. It seems to be Europe's principal industry, since Hitler took over. You don't know what the hell I'm talking about, do you?'

  Luis narrowed his eyes, and probed the air with his outstretched fingers. 'The linguistic concept is not unfamiliar,' he said, 'although certain nuances--'

  'Bullshit. And that's a good example. The word has a special meaning for Americans, you see, Luis.' She fingered back her hair, dark as wine in the bottle; and when she looked up, her jaw curved to a clean, confident point. 'Bullshit is blowing too hard, coming on too strong. Politicians bullshit at elections, right? Detroit bullshits about cars. Bullshit is ballyhoo. Horseshit, on the other hand, is just bad news.'

  'Horseshit on either hand has very little to commend it,' Luis observed gravely.

  Julie turned her head sharply, almost fooled by his tone, and smiled. 'You said it ... Horseshit is lies, deliberate dirty, greedy, selfish lies. Most religion is horseshit. Chicken-shit is different again. Chicken shit is God's way of paying me back for saying religion is horseshit. Burned toast is chickenshit. Soap in your eyes is chickenshit. Menstruation is chickenshit.' She glanced at Luis.

  'I know about menstruation,' he said. 'I read about it in a book.'

  'Yeah? And what did you think of it?'

  Luis considered. 'I thought it was not a very smart idea.'

  'Well . . . even God made mistakes.'

  Luis held his glass up to the light. The wine glowed like a stormy sunset. 'You are very lovely,' he remarked.

  Pause. 'That's horseshit. I think.' she said. 'Or is it bullshit . . .?' She munched some more ham. 'No, I was right first time, it's horseshit. Nice try, though. You said it beautifully.'

  Luis furrowed his brow and saddened his eyes in a show of concern which, he knew from experience, older Spanish women found touching. 'Perhaps you are not the best judge of yourself,' he suggested.

  'Oh, I think I'm gorgeous. But I also work for MGM, and MGM is in the loveliness business, so I know what I look like. My face rates above the back of a bus and below Rita Hay-worth's stand-in. Are you feeling okay?'

  'Yes, I'm fine.'

  'You're looking kind of haggard there. I thought maybe it was the booze.'

  Luis erased the furrows from his brow and squared his shoulders. 'If you don't mind, Julie, I should like to move to another bar. It is still possible that German agents are watching this place. We can leave by a side door and thus evade them.'

  She finished her wine, observing him over the rim of the glass. 'Why don't you just go out and chuck 'em through the nearest plate-glass window?' she asked. 'That's what MGM would do.'

  'Have you ever seen anyone do it?' He put money on the table, and stood up. 'I have. During our Civil War. I saw some people try to throw a man through a shop window. It was not easy, he kept bouncing off, those windows are tough. It took them a long time and I'm fairly sure that he was not alive when they finally succeeded.'

  He led her to the side door.

  'Whose side were they on?' she asked.

  'I'm damned if I can remember.'

  They went through some back-alleys, pungent with garbage cans and purple with dusk, and into another cave-like bar.

  'You never told me the special American meaning of dogshit,' Luis said.

  'Didn't I?' Julie eased behind a table and looked up at the baffled, glassy stare of a bull's-head mounted on the opposite wall. 'Well, war is dogshit, Luis. That is all ye know and all ye need to know. Make sure they understand that in the . . . What did you say?. . . Interna
tional Red Cross. Or whatever.'

  Later, Luis offered to take her to dinner, but she refused. She went back to her hotel, which turned out to be the Bristol, and he went back to his apartment.

  It had been a rich, full day and he was tired, yet he had difficulty getting to sleep. He got up and re-read some of the short stories of Ernest Hemingway. They were less satisfying the second time around. Hemingway, he noticed, was not very good at women. He was first-class at bull-fights, prize-fights and big-game-hunting, but he kept women at arm's-length; which seemed to Luis, in his curiously excited and fatigued condition, to be a waste of women. And therefore a waste of Hemingway too. At last he slept.

  Chapter 17

  After breakfast, Otto Krafft took Luis to Colonel Christian.

  'Good kippers?' Christian asked.

  'Fair. They were not oak-smoked,' Luis said. 'The best kippers are oak-smoked, you know.'

  'I didn't know. What a waste of a noble tree. Dreadful stuff, fish. All those bones. Like booby-trapped chicken.

  One good thing about Madrid is it's such a long way from the sea. Unlike Denmark, for instance. I once did six months in Copenhagen. Fish, fish, fish; I nearly died. I'm sure that if God meant us to eat fish, he would have made it taste like pork with apple sauce.'

  'I like fish,' Luis said. 'Especially oak-smoked kippers.'

  'Depraved,' Christian said. 'You must go to Copenhagen one day and indulge yourself. In the meantime, we have this mission to England to arrange.'

  'The English like fish,' Krafft observed.

  'In that case everyone should be very happy, because one of the things we shall want reports about is the British scale of rations. Do you know the Morse code, Mr Cabrillo?'

  'No.'

  'Franz will teach you. Can you operate a radio set? Pick a lock? Use firearms? Take microphotographs? Tap a telephone?'

  'No, none of those things.'

  'Good, I prefer a man with an open mind. We shall stock it with our skills. In two weeks you will be a trained agent. Have you any talents which we should know about?'